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THREE CENTURIES OF SCOTTISH
LITERATURE.

PUBLISHED BV

JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW,
IPublish^rs to the antbcrsitg.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK,
London, - ■ • SiJnpkin, Havtilton atid Co.
Cambridge, - - Macmillan and Boiues.
Editiburgh, ■ ■ Douglas and Fonlis.

MDCCCXCIII.

THREE CENTURIES OF
SCOTTISH LITERATURE

BY

HUGH WALKER, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN ST. OAVId's COLLEGE, LAMPETER

VOL. I
THE REFORMATION TO THE UNION

NEW YORK
MACMILLAN AND CO.

1893

V.I

PREFACE.

The history of Scottish literature (under which term
GaeHc literature is not here included) is divisible into
two great periods. The first extends from the dawn of
letters in Scotland to the time when the desire for re-
ligious reform began to affect literature vitally ; the second
starts then, and extends down almost to the present
day. Practically, the name of Lindsay is the first in
the second period. Though he lived and wrote before
the formal triumph of the Reformation, his principal
works were deeply influenced by the spirit of religious
reform ; and there is none of his predecessors of whom
this can be said. The lower limit of the period is
less easily fixed. It has been frequently said, and I
think it is substantially true, that a really national
literature can no longer exist on a great scale in Scot-
land. There have been indeed some very remarkable
and most distinctively Scottish books published in recent
years. It would be most ungrateful on the part of
any Scotchman to ignore or to underrate such work as
that of Mr. R. L. Stevenson in his Kidnapped, of " Hugh

VI PREFACE.

Haliburton " in his Horace in Homespun, or of Mr. J. M.
Barrie in his pictures of Thrums. But i)robably these
writers would be among the first to acknowledge that
certain changes which have passed over the country since
the days of Scott have narrowed the range of such work.
The cities and the upper classes have been largely Angli-
cised. The Scotland of Lord Cockburn's Memoirs, with
its Scotch-speaking Judges of Session, and its ladies of
rank, entirely Scotch both in language and habits, is gone.
Well marked national peculiarities are now to be found
principally in the remoter and quieter rural districts, and
in the lower classes of society. On the whole, it seems
best to regard Scott as the last great figure in the Scotland
which was the outcome of the Reformation.

Of the two periods thus defined, I have tried to deal
only with the second. The history of the earlier period
has been written within recent years ; and probably popu-
lar curiosity on the subject is satisfied. There is however
no book which professes to do what I have here attempted
for the second period. My object has been to trace the
literary movement for the three centuries between Lindsay
and Scott. In order to do so, I have not thought it
necessary to criticise, or even to mention, all the writers
who flourished in Scotland during the period in question.
I have preferred to single out those writers or groups of
writers who seemed best to illustrate different aspects of
literature, or different stages of its progress. Some authors
extremely interesting in themselves, as for example Alex-
ander Montgomery and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, are
passed over because they were somewhat isolated, and
were not individually great enough to exercise a marked

PREFACE. VI 1

influence. A number of much smaller men are criticised,
because they happen to be members of groups which are
collectively important. I have omitted others again, like
the historians of the eighteenth century, because it seems
to me that they almost entirely denationalised them-
selves. It is not merely that they wrote in English :
several of the chapters which follow are devoted to men
who likewise wrote in English. But I think that in the
Anglo-Scottish poets of the eighteenth century there may
be detected a flavour of nationality, which is less easily
perceived in Hume and Robertson ; while their brethren
of the previous century are interesting just because their
imitation of English models shows what, but for the
struggle between Presbytery and Episcopacy, the union
under James would probably have made Scottish literature.
There are others, like James Hogg, in whom the national
characteristics are prominent, and who are nevertheless
omitted, because there is very little in them which
cannot be illustrated under the greater names of Scott and
Burns. My aim in short has been, not to include every
name, but rather to illustrate every considerable n)ove-
ment.

A word of explanation may be necessary as to the
scope of this book in respect of language. I have stated
above the reason which has induced me to examine many
who wrote in English ; but it may seem peculiar that I have
devoted a whole chapter to a writer in Latin. The reason
is that in a literature so limited, comparatively, as that
of Scotland, Buchanan is too great a figure, both for his
writings and for his personality, to be neglected. In the
same way, in English literature, the Latin writings of

Vlll PREFACE.

Bacon demand a recognition which is not given to the
ordinary Latinist.

I am greatly indebted to Professor Henry Jones, of St.
Andrews, who has read both the manuscript and the proofs,
and has made many valuable suggestions. I also owe
thanks to the proprietors of the Scots Magazine, who have
kindly permitted me to make use of an article on John
Knox which appeared there. The chapter here devoted
to Knox is however more comprehensive in its aim than
that article, and in most respects different from it.

HUGH WALKER.

December, 1892.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION— LINDSAY AND
THE WEDDERBURNS,

CHAPTER II.

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION-
GEORGE BUCHANAN, 49

CHAPTER III.
THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION— JOHN KNOX, - %i

CHAPTER IV.

THE ANGLO-SCOTTISH POETS OF THE SEVEN-
TEENTH CENTURY, 129

X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER V.
THE POPULAR BALLADS, 162

CHAPTER VI.
THE EARLIER SONGS, ------- 193

THREE CENTURIES OF SCOTTISH
LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION.

LINDSA V AND THE WEDDERBURNS.

The part which Hterature played in the movement for
religious reform in Scotland is not sufficiently recognised.
It is true that Protestantism, after it had attained its full
stature and strength, was well able to stand, and did
stand, alone and unsupported; but this was by no means
the case in the period of immaturity. At that time, the
support which the Reformation received from literature
was of prime importance. The principal, though not the
sole, object of the present essay is to illustrate that support,
with special reference to the poet Lindsay and the
brothers Wedderburn.

All great movements are heralded by premonitory
mutterings. We date the beginning of the Scottish Refor-
mation in the second quarter of the sixteenth century;
but all through the fifteenth, indications, scanty but suffi-
cient, in Acts of Parliament and prosecutions for heresy,
show that the religious unrest of other countries extended
to Scotland. Towards its close, in 1494, the movement of
the Lollards of Kyle proved that the discontent was be-

2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

ginning to take definite form. But the Lollards were an
solated body ; and after their trial, Knox tells us, there was
hardly any question of religion for nearly thirty years.
He accordingly begins his history with the martyrdom of
Patrick Hamilton in 1528.

In literature too there are first subdued murmurs or special
criticisms, and then, after an interval, a determined attack.
About the time when the Lollards of Kyle were raising
their protest Dunbar was relieving his feelings by satire
on the abuses of the Church. But Dunbar was no re-
former either of religion or morals. He was a churchman
who wore his faith loosely but without much questioning,
and his discontent arose rather from personal grievances
than from a sense of public wrongs. He was barely touched
with the spirit of the Reformation. And for some time
after Dunbar the great mass of the scholarship of the age
ranged itself with more or less of reservation on the side of
the ancient faith. It could not be otherwise. The lovers of
learning were naturally attached to the Church which had
fostered the Universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aber-
deen. The sense of personal interest weighed in the same
scale; and gratitude and hope united were powerful enough
to attach to Rome those literary leaders who had reached
middle age before the burning of Hamilton. Boece and
Major were both of the Church party, and Bellenden,
though he was a younger man, adopted similar views.
James Inglis, Abbot of Culross, who was reputed one of
the best poets of his time, was officially connected with
the Church ; but if the General Satyix ascribed to him in
the Maitland MS.^ be really his, he must be ranked among
■• Bannatyne assigns it to Dunbar.

LINDSA Y AND THE IVEDDERBURNS. 3

the most outspoken of the critics within her pale. The phrase
in which Lindsay refers to him, " Culross hes his pen maid
impotent,"^ reminds us of one of the most effective weapons
of defence in her armoury. A discontented priest was
always apt to see things in a new light after he had been
promoted.

But while habit, reverence for the past, and the natural
ambition for preferment, all fought in favour of the main-
tenance of things as they were, the almost universal criticism
of details proved the need of change. Time was with the
innovators. In the course of a generation the battle was won
and all the weight of learning and talent changed sides.
No one at first foresaw the results of the conflict ; not
Knox himself when he entered the field, still less the
literary assailants of the Church. But there were literary
forerunners of the Reformation whose attitude was as definite
as that of Patrick Hamilton ; and of these the leaders
in different spheres were Sir David Lindsay and George
Buchanan. They wrote, not as trained and professional
theologians, but as men of letters awake to the abuses
of the time ; and their favourite weapon was satire.
Buchanan probably knew better than Lindsay what might
be expected of the new movement ; for during his residence
abroad he had seen the effects of the Lutheran opinions,
with which his countryman could hardly be acquainted
except by report ; but Lindsay is at once prior in time
and more important in his practical bearing on the Refor-
mation.

Lindsay came before the world as a poet almost in
the very year of Patrick Hamilton's death; and as Knox

•"■ Complaynt of the Papyngo — Prolog.

4 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

dates the beginning of a new era in religion from Hamilton,
so we may date the opening of a new epoch in Scottish
literature from Lindsay. He is usually mentioned along
with Dunbar and Douglas, but he had no intimate con-
nection with them except that of time. His lot was thrown
in with the Reformation almost as decidedly as that of
Knox; and he has reaped the reward of clearness of vision,
honesty, and courage, in a popularity such as has fallen to the
lot of none of his predecessors. Dunbar's name soon sank
into obscurity, from which it was not rescued till the time
of Allan Ramsay ; but the name of Lindsay has never been
forgotten by the peasantry of Scotland, and his works were
for generations familiar to them. This fact alone goes far
to prove how wide-reaching the influence of the Reforma-
tion was. Nothing lives through it unless it is connected
with the story of the struggle for religious freedom, or,
like Barbour's work, with the earlier but equally absorbing
story of the War of Independence. The preference of the
people for Lindsay is not due to critical blindness, but
rather to the fact that he handles the theme of all others
dearest to their heart : his brethren belong to a buried past,
he is of the present.

The early history of Lindsay, like that of most of his
brother poets, is obscure. Both the date and place of his
birth are uncertain. He was descended from the noble house
of Lindsay of Byres and owned two estates, Garmylton
in East Lothian and the Mount in Fife ; but though his
name is always associated with the latter, and though
tradition connects it with his birth, there is no clear
evidence on the point. It is conjectured that he was
born about the year 1490, and he seems to have been

LINDSA Y AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 5

educated at St. Andrews ; but nothing definite is known
regarding his life until he is found in an office about the
court in the year 15 ii. On the birth of the young
prince, afterwards James V., in 15 12, he became specially
attached to his service. He appears occasionally in
attendance on the king \ and, in particular, he was one of
the witnesses of the famous apparition at Linlithgow which
warned James to abandon his expedition against England.
The story rests partly on the credit of Lindsay : Pitscottie
in narrating it refers to him as a witness, though he does
not allege his direct testimony; while Buchanan expressly
asserts that he would have passed it over as a vulgar fable
if he had not been assured of its truth by Lindsay, — "homo
spectatae fidei et probitatis, nee a literarum studiis alienus,
et cujus totae vitae tenor longissime a mentiendo aberat."^
There is no reason to discredit either Lindsay's truth-
fulness or the fact of the apparition ; what is doubtful is
its supernatural character.

Lindsay's occupations at court, as described by him-
self in The Dreme and The Complnynt, were not very
elevated. At the beginning he was not even the
king's tutor ; that office was held by Gawin Dunbar,
afterwards Archbishoj) of Glasgow and Lord Chancellor
of Scotland. Lindsay meantime played the part of a kind
of dry-nurse, charged with the task of keeping his master
amused and attending to his childish wants. The offices
he filled, as enumerated by himself in the Epistil to the
Kingis Grace prefixed to The Dreme, were those of sewer,
cupbearer, carver, usher, " secreit thesaurare," and "cheiffe
cubiculare." He performed most of the services of a maid :
^ Renim Scot. Hist. xiii. 31.

6 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

" Quhen thow wes young, I bure thee in niyne arme
Full tenderlle, tyll thow begouth to gang ;

And in thy bed oft happit thee full warme,

With lute in hand, syne, svveitlie to thee sang:
Sumtyme, in dansing, feiralie I flang ;

And sumtyme, playand farsis on the flure ;

And sumtyme, on myne office takkand cure.

"And sumtyme, lyke ane feind, transfigurate,
And sumtyme, like the greislie gaist of Gye ;
In divers forms oft tymes disfigurate,
And sumtyme, dissagyist full plesandlye.
So, sen thy birth I have continewalye
Bene occupyit, and aye to thy plesoure,
And sumtyme, Sevvare, Coppare, and Carvoure."

These functions are to modern taste sufficiently incongruous
with the position of Lindsay by birth and education ; but
menial services to royalty long stood in fact, and still stand
in the language of court etiquette, on a special footing. It
is interesting to notice that the future poet was the prince's
minstrel, and the future dramatist was in a humble way
court actor. His name first figures in the Treasurer's
accounts for materials " to be a play coat to David Lyndsay
for the play, playit in the king and quenis presence in
the Abbey of Holyrood." ^ As James passed from infancy
into boyhood the character of Lindsay's entertainment had
to change. Popular legends, the prophecies of the Rhymer,
Bede, and Merlin, the histories of the leading mediaeval
heroes, and the stories of Chaucer and Lydgate, furnished
him with materials for the narratives which took the place
of the earlier farcical shows.

About 1522 Lindsay married a lady named Janet
Douglas ; but this event does not appear to have changed

^ Quoted in Laing's Memoir of Lindsay.

LINDSA V AND THE VVEDDERBURNS. 7

the tenor of his life. Some two years later occurred the
revolution known as the " Erection " of King James, which
entirely changed the condition and prospects both internal
and external of Scotland. The Regent Albany had been
the consistent champion of French influence ; but the now
dominant Douglases were of the English faction. Lindsay
more than once prays that Scotland may never again be
afflicted with the miseries of a minority, and what he
saw in the early years of James V. gave ample ground
for his dread. The boy-king was nothing more than a
piece in the hands of unscrupulous players; and foreign
influences intensified the evils of domestic jealousies. The
party installed in power by this event retained their seat
for four years. James, nominally supreme, was really a
prisoner in the hands of Angus. But in 1528 the king
escaped from Falkland to Stirling, a counter-revolution
was effected, and the Douglas rule was at an end; for
James, once free from the tutorship of Angus, pursued
him and all his house with relentless hostility.

The Erection drove Lindsay from the court into retire-
ment ; but though he was deposed from his place, he
was not personally ill-treated at this crisis. His pension
was not cut off, and his wife continued to hold a sub-
ordinate office in the royal household. It was apparently
in this enforced leisure that Lindsay began to write. His
earliest known poem is T/ie Dre7ne, which must have
been composed soon after the overthrow of Angus, In
it Lindsay struck at once the notes which characterised
his work throughout ; and though his satire deepened in
his later pieces, he never afterwards reached a higher
poetic level. The Dreme was evidently composed with

8 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

the double object of bringing before James the evils under
which his country was suffering and reminding him that
the writer, unlike his fellow-labourer Gawin Dunbar, was
still unrewarded for his services ; for the pension which
he drew was too small to be regarded as a full recom-
pense. But the latter object is with honourable dignity
kept in the background. In the prefatory Epistil, after
reminding the king of his youth spent in the royal
service, for which, he says, " hope hes me hecht ane
gudlie recompense," he passes on with the usual apology
for the absence of " ornate termis " to the Prolog to the
poem proper. This prologue is one of the few passages
in Lindsay that can be fairly reckoned poetical. He
narrates how after a sleepless night he walked out on a
January morning to the shore. The winter landscape is
painted with much feeling — the branches bared by the
blast, the snow and sleet "perturbing" all the air, the
flowers " under dame Naturis mantyll lurking law," and
the birds mourning the absence of summer. The poet
reaches the sea, and after pacing for a while up and
down on the sand, he takes refuge in a little cave in a
cliff, where, musing on the resemblance between the un-
stable world and the restless waves, he is thrown into
the conventional sleep and sees the conventional vision.
The machinery of the poem is thus anything but original.
The vision is a device worn threadbare in our older
poets, and in Lindsay there is the additional improbability
of incongruent circumstances. But to atone for this he
carries us away from the hackneyed May morning to a
fresh scene, and suits his landscape to the complexion
of his thoughts if not to the plan of his poem.

1

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 9

While the poet sleeps, a lady who calls herself Dame
Remembrance appears before him, and sinks down with
him through the earth, "into the lawest Hell." Here
Lindsay's preferences begin to peep out. The place
of torment is peopled by all sorts and conditions of
men, but especially by Churchmen of every descrip-
tion, who are there because of covetousness, lust, and
ambition, and because they did not instruct the ignor-
ant by preaching. But above all, here as elsewhere,
Lindsay dwells upon temporal wealth as the great source
of corruption in the Church. The Emperor Constantine
is the fountain and spring of all the evil. As yet how-
ever, notwithstanding his clear vision of abuses, Lindsay
has no fault to find with the doctrines of the Church.
He proclaims his belief "that the trew Kirk can no way
erre at all." He has a special class of sufferers for
neglect of the confessional. He seats the "Queue of
Quenis" next the throne of God. He even accepts,
though unwillingly, the doctrine of purgatory, because it
rests on the authority of " gret clerkis " ; but the stanza
in which he expresses this belief concludes significantly
— "Quhowbeit my hope standis most in Cristis blude."
It is notable that this doctrine of purgatory, which
Lindsay bows to against his own judgment, was, accord-
ing to Knox, one of the "trifles" for which Patrick
Hamilton suffered ; and that among the " matters of
greater importance" dealt with in Hamilton's treatise was
that of the atonement just hinted at by Lindsay.

Passing from this pit of despair the poet and his
guide ascend through purgatory, the limbo of unbaptised
babes, and that of pre-Christian mankind. These they

10 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

leave behind with a speed which marks Lindsay's dislike
of the doctrines, and rise through the nine spheres of
the old astronomers to heaven itself. But this starry
flight is somewhat purposeless. Without learning, or at
least without revealing, anything very striking, they descend
again to a point from which the whole earth is visible
at once. After a rapid description of the world in
accordance with mediaeval cosmography the poet fixes
his gaze upon Scotland ; and here we come upon the
kernel and discover the purpose of the poem. It is a
political essay meant for the instruction and guidance of
James. The poet from his height views the realm of
Scotland with her " fructuall " mountains, lusty vales,
rich rivers, her abundant game and store of metals,
her people fair, able, strong to endure great deeds —
everything that ought to create wealth, and yet all pro-
ducing only poverty. Dame Remembrance assures him
that the cause of all the unhappiness is " wanting of
justice, polycie, and peace," and that they who are to
blame for this want are the nobles. This conclusion is
driven home by the appearance of John the Commoun-
weill, a character very familiar to the readers of Lind-
say : —

"And thus as we were talking, to and fro,

We saw a bousteous berne cum ouir the bent,
Bot hors, on futc, als fast as he mycht go,

Quhose rayment wes all raggit, revin, and rent ;
With visage leyne, as he had fastit Lent :
And fordwart fast, his wayis he did advance,
With ane rycht melancolious countynance." ^

' Cf. the picture in The Complaynt of Scotland of the third son of
Dame Scotia.

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. II

He is leaving the country, " for Policye is fled again in
France," and Justice is almost blind. In the Border there
is nothing but theft and murder; in the Highlands and
Islands, thriftlessness, poverty, and disorder; while greed
and self-seeking have made the Lowlands as bad. There is
no redress to be had, therefore he departs to return no
more till he sees the country guided "be wysedom of ane
gude auld prudent Kyng." Here the vision comes to an
end. A ship running into the bay fires her cannon and
lets down sails and anchor with crash and clatter, and the
poet awakes.

Such is Lindsay on his first appearance in the field of
letters, and such he remains to the end. There is more
poetic promise than is quite redeemed in later years ; but
the vigorous sense and the manly courage which dares to
utter the truth about the most powerful, qualities which
make Lindsay respectable even at his lowest, grow with
time. He at once points to the nobles and priests as
the source of all the evils under which Scotland \vas
suffering, and he never after hesitates or falters. There
is always a purpose in Lindsay's verse, and that purpose
is reform. The emphasis falls somewhat differently in later
days, when the misdeeds of the nobles have lost the
prominence which the rise and fall of Angus had given to
them at this moment, when it has become more evident
that the priesthood is the real "plague spot and embossed
carbuncle " of the State, and when the hope of reform from
within the Church has faded away. But however the parts
they play may vary in relative importance, the characters
upon Lindsay's stage are always the same. No man ever
held to his purpose more faithfully than he.

1 2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

When next Lindsay wrote, self had a larger place in
his thoughts. Already in The Drcme his youth is "neir
ouer blawin " ; and when that poem passed, like his
previous services, unrewarded, he seems to have felt
the necessity of speaking out. He does so in The Com-
playnt to the Kingis Grace with bold honesty. It is a
vigorous piece of octosyllabic verse, recounting again the
personal services mentioned already in The Dre?tie, touch-
ing upon the same evils in the State, and more especially
those connected with religion, but entering into most
detail with regard to the Douglas usurpation. The poet
was not sparing in his condemnation of it. Without stop-
ping to weigh the risk of offending James, who was still
only a boy, Lindsay, in some of the most rapid and for-
cible lines he ever wrote, denounced the wickedness of
taking a mere child from the schools to put in his hands
the government of the country, and the selfishness of the
nobles in afterwards playing upon his passions and tempt-
ing him to vice. His indignation was fired at once by love of
his country, and by personal affection for the prince who
had grown up under his hands. He evidently regarded
James as a boy of promise, and his anger was all the hotter
when he saw that promise blasted for the selfish ends of the
nobles. This sincerity of passion lifts The Complaynt above
the level of begging poems. Most writers who have
attempted such subjects have soiled their fingers with them;
but Lindsay rises in personal character, if not in reputation
as a poet. It was impossible for him to be self-centred,
and there is in every line evidence of the truth of his own
assertion that he was still without preferment only because
he would not beg.

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 1 3

The Complaynt speedily bore fruit. In tlie same year
in which it was given to the pubUc (apparently 1529),
Lindsay was knighted and made Lyon King of Arms.
The appointment was one which changed the course of his
life. Hitherto his position had been subordinate ; now he
became for many important purposes representative of the
sovereign. An elaborate Register of Arms of the noble
families of Scotland, executed under his direction and
guidance, and finished in 1542, exists to prove that he was
not a mere holiday herald ; and the quality of the work is
said to be creditable to those employed upon it. But besides
performing tasks of this kind at home, Lindsay, as chief
herald, was called upon from time to time to appear at foreign
courts ; and perhaps it was these later travels that gave
rise to the unsupported story of his youthful wanderings.
He is known to have been in Flanders in 1531, engaged
upon the business of renewing a commercial treaty with the
Netherlands; and once more in 1536 he was in France to
help in arranging a marriage for James. At home one of
his functions was to superintend State ceremonials ; and
perhaps his familiarity with scenic effects both in his youth
and his mature years had something to do in determining
the character of his most important work.

During those years Lindsay was far from idle with his
pen. The first of his writings after his appointment as Lyon
King was the curious piece entitled The Testamettt and
Complay?it of the Papyngo (parrot). It is furnished as
usual with an apologetic prologue, in which the poet
complains that all poetic matter has been exhausted by his
predecessors — "the poleit termes are pullit everilk one."
This discloses the secret of the great vice of poetic style

1 4 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

in that age. The poet must find or invent " terms rethory-
call," "aureait," "poleit," and in straining after them he
floods the language with ill-considered and incongruous
foreign importations. Lindsay was by no means the only
or the chief offender in this way : the mediocrity of his
poetic power and the backbone of substance in all his
works combined to save him from the flaw which sometimes
fatally mars the verse of greater writers ; but his adoption
of this style whenever his theme admitted, shows that he
was as deeply imbued as any with the false taste which it
indicates. But the chief interest of the prologue lies in the
sketch it furnishes of the state of poetry in Scotland at the
time and shortly before. It gives a long list of the names
of poets, living and dead, mentioning among the latter most
of those whose names appear in Dunbar's Lament for the
Makaris. The majority of them are mere shades ; their
works are either entirely lost or exist only in unimportant
fragments ; but the roll at least affords evidence that there
was at that time a great deal of poetic activity about the
Scottish court, and a considerable body, if not a high
quality of work. Further, a careful examination, with
reference to existing fragments, of the terms in which
Lindsay refers to his fellow bards, rouses respect for
his critical faculty. His allusions are not all as laudatory
as they seem : it is possible to detect innuendo and sly hints
at weaknesses under the guise of praise. A few years after
The Complaynt of the Papyngo was written, another name,
that of King James himself, would certainly have been
added to the list. In an interesting little piece, written
probably about 1536, Lindsay addresses him as " Prince of
Poetry," "of flowand Rethorick the P1our," and master of

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. I 5

"ornate meter." This is in answer to the King's Flytmg ;
and though these flattering phrases may refer only to this
lost Fiyting, an example of a coarse and far from elevated
species of composition extremely common in those days,
they are still notable as proving that however the claims of
James V. to Chrisfs Kirk on the Green and The Gaberlunzie
Man may be settled, he, like so many others of his house,
showed a taste for letters.

In The Coinplaynt of the Popyngo Lindsay puts into the
mouth of the king's parrot those criticisms of Church
and State which he had already expressed less fully in
his own name. The satire derives some piquancy from
the plan of the poem, a plan which Lindsay simply
adopts from his predecessors. It is a plan condemned
by critics ; but criticism has not killed The Hind and the
Panther ; and incongruities which can be overlooked in
Dryden are still more pardonable in a writer of the
sixteenth century.

Lindsay's parrot, though " rycht fat and nocht weill
usit to flee," attempts to climb a tall tree, but falls and is
impaled upon a stake. In that condition she addresses
two epistles, one to the king, the other to her brethren
at court. The former contains much good advice strongly
though respectfully put. Plain speaking to the Crown
was not as rare in Scotland as it was in England, where
from an early period the powers of the sovereign were
greater. Still, neither in Scotland nor anywhere else have
there been many who, filling a position like Lindsay's,
have spoken as openly as he did. Those who have least
disguised their opinions have generally been either men
somewhat removed from court, or men supported there

1 6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

by a power which had to be respected. Lindsay, on the
other hand, had no power except such as the king chose
to give him ; and all his hopes were centred in royalty.
In such circumstances his fearless honesty in addressing
a young, self-willed, half-spoilt king was alike honourable
to him and to James. Personal affection on both sides
probably goes far to explain it. Nor does the long delay in
promotion prove any want of regard on the part of the
king ; for promotion came almost as soon as James was
his own master.

The second epistle, still more than the first, is eloquent
of the danger which threatens the poet who is too much
engrossed with a purpose other than artistic. This epistle
points the moral, so often handled in the Middle Ages, of
the Falls of Princes ; and to do so reviews in most prosaic
style the history of Scotland. One of the besetting sins
of Lindsay was that he had little artistic sense, and hardly
any notion of the necessity of selection. Quicqiiid agimt
hommes has been at all times the subject of satirists ;
but few have attempted as persistently as he to mix
the whole of their material in the farrago of a single piece.
Both epistles however must be regarded as merely pre-
liminary. The poet has relieved his soul for the time
of one of its constant burdens, the sense of evils actual or
threatening in the State; and he now turns to that which
is at present and for ever nearest his heart, the condition of
the Church. In his own Complaynt he had congratulated
the king that there was nothing

" Withoute p;ude ordour in this land,
Except the Spiritualitie."

With reason, therefore, he might now have passed over

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 17

temporal affairs ; and not without cause is he dull in
the treatment of them.

When, in the last and longest section of The Complaytit of
the Papyngo, Lindsay turns to the consideration of matters
spiritual, the interest deepens and the style entirely changes.
We rise above the atmosphere of respectable common-
place to a region in which abundance of matter and
warm present interest give a glow and fire to each
phrase. In the earlier parts of this Complaynt the poet
simply utters his own sentiments through an uncouth
medium. Now the resources of the plan are developed
with considerable ingenuity. Seeing the Papyngo in pain
the Pye, the Raven, and the Gled (Kite) come near to
shrive her. The Pye proclaims himself

"One Channoun regulare,

And of my brether Piyour principall :
My quhyte rocket, my clene lyfe doith declare ;

The blak bene of the deith memoriall :

Quharefore, I thynk your gudis naturall
Sulde be submyttit hole into my cure ;
Ye knaw I am ane holye creature."

But the Papyngo is not easy in mind —

' * Father, be the rude,
Howbeit your rayment be religious lyke,
Your conscience, I suspect, be nocht gude ;
I did persave, quhen prevelye ye did pyke
Ane chekin from ane hen, under ane dyke.
I grant, said he, that hen wes my gude freind,
And I that chekin tuke, hot for my teind."

The Papyngo remaining unconvinced expounds to the
Pye and his brethren the Raven (a black monk), and
the Gled (a holy friar), the cause of her suspicions and
the origin of corruption in the Church. Again the

1 8 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

satirist reverts to Constantine. Corruption begins when
the Church espouses Property and so begets Riches
and Sensuality. These banish Chastity and Devotion.
The former is traced in her exile through Italy, France,
and England, everywhere rejected and cast out. Her
fate is no better in Scotland. She is ousted by one re-
ligious order after another until she finds refuge upon
the Borough Muir. It is pleasant to notice that the
satirist of abuses has still a word of praise for pure life
and unfeigned devotion —

" Quhare bene scho now, than said the gredy Gled ?
Nocht amang yow, said scho, I yow assure :
I traist scho bene upon the Borrow-mure,
Besouth Edinburgh, and that rycht mony menis,
Profest amang the Systeris of the Schenis."

At last the Papyngo lies at the brink of death. She
shrives herself to the Gled, and bequeaths her various
possessions to those who seem to need them most ;
but she is no sooner dead than her executors, disregard-
ing her bequests, fall to quarrelling over her remains,
until in the end the Gled flies away with what is left —

"The lave, with all tliair niycht.
To chace the Gled, flew all out of my sycht."

So far as the chronology of Lindsay's poems can be
fixed, there is a gap of several years between TJie Com-
playnt of the Papyngo and the piece which follows next.
As there is no known reason why he should have ceased
to write, the existence of the gap may fairly be advanced
as a ground for suspecting that he was already engaged
upon The Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis ; but setting aside
for the present the disputed question of the date of this

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 19

work, it appears that for the next eight or nine years
Lindsay is represented only by a few fugitive pieces. In
one of these, Kitieis Confesstoun, his favourite note of
satire against the Church is repeated, with special reference
to auricular confession. In another, the Si/ppltcatioun in
Contewptioun of Syde Taillis, the invective is directed
against female luxury in dress, a subject as old as the
lament for the decline of manly strength. There are
besides one or two pieces connected with public events.
From his reputation as a poet, his familiarity with all
that related to the king, and the general nature of his
duties as a herald, Lindsay might naturally be expected
to perform some of those functions which fall to a Poet
Laureate. One specimen of such handiwork exists in
the Deploratioun of the Deith of Quene Magdalene. The
Justing betiiix James Watsoiai and Jhone Barbour., widely
different as it is, may perhaps be regarded as another.
It celebrates a mock tournament which formed part of
the rejoicings over the arrival of the successor to Queen
Magdalen.

Those years, so unproductive of poetic fruit, were also
historically uneventful. There were the usual troubles
with England, settled for the time by the peace of 1534;
and the usual negotiations with France culminating in
the two successive French marriages, the latter of which
was destined to bring in its train momentous con-
sequences. The movement against the priesthood and
the religious orders was meanwhile going on under the
surface. Some of its effects show themselves in the per-
secutions of 1539, when five heretics were burnt and a
number, among whom was Buchanan, driven into exile.

20 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

These persecutions however mark, not the steady policy
of James, but a mysterious change which passed over it.
Just before the persecution he had been roused to indig-
nation against the Franciscan friars because he beUeved
them to be impHcated in certain obscure cases of treason
which had lately occurred.^ But the Church authorities
had found means to change the king's policy ; his instru-
ments were given up to their vengeance, and the true
faith was saved for the time from the assaults of its
critics.

It is remarkable that Lindsay, the unsparing satirist of
the Church, escaped persecution, not on this occasion
only but in after years as well ; and the cause of his life-
long immunity has been the subject of much debate. It
has been suggested that the explanation is to be found
in the king's friendship for him ; or, again, that Lindsay's
character as a patriotic Scot protected him. Neither ex-
planation is sufficient ; not the former, because the phe-
nomenon to be accounted for continued long after the
death of the king. Lindsay lived through the ascendency
of Cardinal Beaton and under the shadow of Mary of
Guise as unscathed as he had lived beneath the shield
of James. Still less is the second explanation satisfac-
tory. Religious zeal has seldom "stood on ceremonies"
in dealing with opponents, and insular patriotism was
the last quality in the world to stay the hand of the
cosmoi)olitan dignitaries of the Church of Rome. Pos-
sibly the influence of England helped to protect Lindsay
after the death of James. The party of reform was com-
pelled by the force of circumstances to look to Henry
^ Buchanan, Dedication of Franciscanus.

LINDSA Y AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 2 I

VIII. for support; and their imperious patron was little
likely to suffer a protege to be harmed. This conjecture
at least agrees with the known facts. Lindsay's position
brought him into intimate connection with the English
representatives at court, so that he was not beyond the
reach of their arm ; and The Tragedie of the Cardinall
proves that, whether on private or public grounds or a
combination of both, Lindsay within a few years after
the death of James was entirely English in his sym-
pathies ; and this in face of the fact that the lofty pre-
tensions of Henry towards the close of James's reign did
much to alienate the Scotch. Lindsay's life did not ex-
tend far enough into the reign of the English Mary to
show what effect that change might have produced.

Just after this persecution of 1539 Lindsay is believed
to have produced the most curious and on the whole the
greatest of his works, the morality entitled The Satyre oj
the Thrie Estaitis. Little need be said by way of intro-
duction to it. The historian of Elizabethan literature
must inquire into the origin of the P^nglish drama ; and
facts in themselves trivial acquire importance from their
relation to the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare and
Jonson ; but in Scotland the drama never had a history.
Lindsay's Satyre contains the promise of better things to
come, but the promise was never redeemed : and in con-
sequence such minute facts as are known with regard to
early dramatic exhibitions remain minute and unimportant.
Before Lindsay the Scottish drama was very rudimentary,
and it remained undeveloped after his day. By a singular
irony of fate this was caused by the triumph of the very
movement in support of which chiefly The Satyre of the

22 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Thrie Estaitis was written. The Reformation stamped
out the spark of dramatic activity in Scotland, as it would
have done in England had the Puritan party risen to power
half a century earlier than it did. Had there ever been an
English Knox, would there have been a Shakespeare ? A
comparison of the literary history of the two countries points
to a negative answer.

So far as there were precedents in Scotland for dramatic
composition, they were of the same class as we find in
England, and they followed the same line of development.
Courtly pageants were a favourite amusement of James IV. ;
and Lindsay himself was employed not only, as has been
already pointed out, in the humble task of devising scenes
to amuse the infant prince, but in the more ambitious
exhibitions before the courtiers. The same taste for scenic
effects continued through the reign of James V. ; and Lindsay
was again employed to superintend the spectacles for the
welcome of Mary of Guise. In the reign of Queen Mary
such shows incurred the hostility of the ministers ; but they
were not given up without a sharp struggle. The unruly
mob of Edinburgh loved the Abbot of Unreason and Robin
Hood more than they feared the pains of hell; and some
time passed before such revels ceased.

There were other shows of a more regular description. In
1440 a play called The Halie Blade was acted at Aberdeen ;
and the fragment called The Droichis Part of the Play.,
which, occurring in the Asloane MS., must be at least
as old as the reign of James IV., proves the existence of
other dramatic pieces. Lindsay's own time produced several
dramatic compositions. His Satyre alone has survived ; but
it is significant that the other plays of which any notice

LINDSA Y AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 23

remains dealt with the same subject. One of the victims of
the persecution of 1539 was a man named Kyllor, a Domin-
ican friar, whose offence was that he had written a mystery
on the Passion in which he denounced the vices of the
clergy. His boldness cost him his life. James Wedderburn
of Dundee took the same means of proclaiming his views,
and was obliged to seek refuge in France. His plays were a
tragedy on the beheading of John the Baptist, and a comedy
on the story of Dionysius the Tyrant, in both of which,
according to Calderwood,^ he " carped roughlie " and
"nipped" the Papists. He further offended by "counter-
footing the conjuring of a ghaist."

It has been already hinted that there is difficulty as to
the date of The Satyre of the Three Estaitis. Some place
it in 1535, others in 1540. Chalmers somewhat dog-
matically asserts, on the authority of internal evidence,
that it was finished in 1535 and first acted on the playfield
at Cupar in Fife in that year. Laing, taking the safer
course of confining himself to ascertained facts, pronounces,
perhaps also a little too confidently, that " it was first
exhibited at Linlithgow at the feast of Epiphany on 6th
January i5f|}." This is undeniably the earliest exhibition
which can be established by positive evidence. But if it
is ever justifiable to draw an inference from the spirit and
general method of an author, we may conclude as Chalmers
does that the central figure of the Satyre is no other than
James V. Certainly it could be no other real person, and
almost as certainly it was no mere figment of the poet's
brain. The subject of the Satyre is the condition of
Scotland, which had been for over twenty years dependent

1 Caklerwood, i. 142 (Wodrow Ed.).

24 SCO TTISH LI TERA TURK.

upon James and his fate. And the picture of Rex

Humanitas — young, inexperienced, praying for guidance in

his reign, full of good impulses but without the knowledge

to enable him to choose between good and evil, and falling

immediately into the hands of Wantonness and Sensuality —

must have been to Lindsay's mind an exact transcript of

James's youth. If so, the Satyrc must have been written

before the marriage of James on the ist January, 1537.

The force of the argument that if the reference had been

to James the play must have been changed in subsequent

representations is not very apparent. A poet is not bound

to follow the changes in the history of the person he had

in his mind in creating a character. To this must be added

the argument already advanced that, dated at 1535, the

Satyre fills satisfactorily an interval in the poet's life otherwise

seemingly fruitless ; for it is doubtful whether any other

piece can be put between the years 1530 and 1536.

The Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis is a morality, with the
usual mixture of concrete human beings and allegorical
impersonations of virtues and vices. It is, like all such
compositions, long, rambling, and loosely constructed ; but
by general consent Lindsay's play, for its vigour and point
and sound sense, takes the place of honour in its class.
It is less abstract and has more human interest than
moralities generally possess : there is interest in the con-
stant reference to the pressing topics of the time ; and
there is a wealth of unpolished humour which only wants
compression to be effective. The characters who appear
upon the stage are of very various merit. Some of them are
lifeless enough, particularly such personages as Correctioun
and the virtues generally ; but, on the other hand, tliere is a

*
«

LINDSAY AND THE VVEDDERBURNS. 25

certain class of the allegorical figures which in a humbler
degree have the same merit as Bunyan's, and for similar
reasons. Falset, Dissait, and Flattrie are clothed with flesh
and blood because Lindsay was profoundly conscious of the
evils against which he directed his satire : they are actual
existences to him just as sin and Christian grace are to
Bunyan. He is successful in the critical and satirical part :
he fails in the suggestions for reconstruction, because he did
not realise the way to cure the body politic as vividly as he
realised the diseases under which it was suffering.

The body of the Satyre is divided into two parts ; but,
so far as its structure can be made out from the authorities
upon which the text rests, ^ there are besides two inter-
ludes connected with it, one introductory, the other intended
to fill the gap between the two parts and to amuse the
common throng in the interval while the principal auditors
were absent from their places. The play is coarse, the
interludes are coarser ; but that of The Puir Man and the
Pardoner is good enough to demand notice. As elsewhere
in his works, now with humour sly or broad, now with down-
right denunciation, Lindsay delights to scorch and flay, to
crush and pulverise "religious men" of all classes con-
nected with the Church of Rome; so he utilises the pause
between the two parts of The Satyre to emphasise with
scathing sarcasm his conviction that all evil is centred in
the Church. The Pardoner, Sir Robert Rome-Raker,

^ These are two: (i) The Bannatyne MS., in which are embodied
a series of interkides taken from Lindsay's satire ; but the grave
matter is professedly left out. (2) The printed edition of 1602, which
must be the foundation of every modern text. The Bannatyne M.S.,
however, though it omits much, also contains matter which does not
appear in the later version.

26 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

enters crying his wares and consigning to the powers of
evil "this unsell wickit New Testament" and its translators,
Luther and his crew, St. Paul and his books. He has a
whole pack of treasures : —

" My patent Pardouns, ye ma se,
Cum frae the Cane of Tartaric,

Weill seald with oster schellis.
Thocht ye have na contritioun,
Ye sail have full remissioun,

With help of buiks and bellis.
Heir is ane relict, lang and braid,
Of Fine Maccoull the richt chaft biaid

With teith, and al togidder :
Of CoUing's cow, heir is ane home,
For eating of Makconnal's corne,

Was slane into liakjuhidder.
Heir is ane coird, baith great and lang,
Quhilk hangit Johne the Armistrang :

Of glide hemp soft, and sound :
Gude, halie peopill, 1 stand for'd
Quha ever beis hangit with this cord,

Neids never to be dround.
The culum of Sanct Brydis kow,
The gruntill of Sanct Antonis sow,

Quhilk buir his haly bell ;
Quha ever he be heiris this bell clinck,
CJif me ane ducat for till drink,

He sail never gang to hell,
Without he be of Baliell liorne :
Maisters, trow ye, that this be scorne !

Cum win this Pardoun, cum."

In the first part of The Satyre proper the note is struck
in the character of Rex Humanitas — a king of noble
aspirations falling at the threshold of his career under
the sway of evil counsellors and plastic as wax in their
hands. Dissait and his fellows, with the ready aid of

LINDSA V AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 2/

the Estate Spiritual, put Chastitie and Veritie in the
stocks and Vice reigns triumphant. Then enters the
deus ex mac/n?ia, Divyne Correctioun. The Virtues are
set free, the Vices put to flight ; SensuaHtie finds refuge
and welcome with her friends the spiritual lords ; the
King is roused from his dreams of luxury and license ;
and the way is thus prepared for part second. It is
remarkable that even at this early date Lindsay seems
to have felt it necessary to guard against the excess of
reforming zeal. He is the enemy of vice, not of
innocent pleasure; and he puts into the mouth of Solace
a request readily granted by Divyne Correctioun, to

"Give us leave to sing,
To dance, to play at chesse, and tabills,
To reid stories, and mirrie fabils,
For pleasure of our King."

This first part is preliminary. It shows reform begun
in high places ; but the Three Estates are still to be
reduced to order. In the second part, summoned by
Diligence, they come upon the stage backwards, led by
their Vices; the Spiritual Estate by Covitice and Sensualitie,
the temporal lords by Publick Oppressioun, the Commons
by Falset and Dissait. When they are challenged for
their singular demeanour, Spiritualitie justifies it on the
plea that they have gone so for many a year and are
very well satisfied to go so still ; and when the Vices
are led away to the stocks, those of Spiritualitie take a
touchingly tender farewell of their superior, assuring him
that though they must depart their spirit will remain with
him. This over, the reform of abuses proceeds. The
temporal lords and the commons, accepting the changes

2 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

demanded, are soon disposed of. Very different is the
attitude of Spiritualitie. " Auld use and wont" covers
every corruption —

"Wee will want nathing that wee have in use,
Kirtit nor kow, teind lambe, teind gryse, nor guse."

It is needless to go over the ground again. The subjects
of complaint are the old familiar themes — the lust, the
greed, the ignorance of the religious orders. If the
satirist's charges of ignorance seem overdrawn they should
be read along with the sober assertion of Knox, that
some of the friars thought the New Testament a book
written by Martin Luther. The Reformer was unques-
tionably a deeply prejudiced man, but he was truthful ;
and he is supported on this point by Buchanan.
Johne the Commoun-weill suggests with reason that
if King David, the " sair sanct," were living he would
repent of his liberality to the Church. The play ends
with the passing of a number of wholesome acts and the
punishment of the wicked, wherein the representatives of
the Spiritual Estate suffer so severely that their very
vices will acknowledge them no more.

For some years Lindsay must have been much engaged
upon the great Register of Arms. Towards the close of
1542, the year in which it was completed, events
occurred which might well have turned the Lyon King's
mind from poetry. The life of James V. closed in
gloom and disaster. His successor was an infant a few
days old ; and Lindsay saw that his declining years
must be passed, as his early manhood had been passed,
amidst the disorders of a long minority, the very evil
against which he had most earnestly prayed and which

I

LINDSA Y AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 2g

had worked more ruin in Scotland than anything else. He
saw all his fears realised — factions, disputes, and stru^les
for power internally ; externally intrigues with France on
the one hand and with England on the other ; confusion
ever growing worse confounded. The death of James
diminished Lindsay's influence. He was estranged from
the Court, without however losing his office; and for
two years there is no trace of him in connexion with any
important events. In 1544 he was abroad as chief herald
delivering the insignia of the various foreign orders with
which James had been decorated. After his return he
sat in parliament ; but the first events which find ex-
pression in his poetry are again events connected with
the state of religion. In 1543 began those acts of
religious vandalism which have made the name of the
Reformers odious to the lovers of art. In Dundee
especially the kirks suffered. This movement, which
connects itself particularly with the name of Wishart,
lasted until the party of reform was temporarily crushed
by the capture of the castle of St. Andrews and the
imprisonment in the galleys of the ringleaders in the
assassination of Cardinal Beaton. Lindsay was sym-
pathetic, and he was one of those who joined in calling
Knox to the office of a preacher ; but he was not of the
party in the castle.

He made use of Beaton however to point a moral in
The Tragedie of the Cardiiiall. It is excessively dull.
A keen search would be needed to discover a single
poetic idea or a single powerful line, while the depths
of bathos to which Lindsay is always liable to sink could
not be better illustrated than by the words in which

30 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

he makes the Cardinal refer to the disposal of his own
body : —

"They saltit me, syne closit me in ane kyste.
I lay unburyit seven monethis and more
Or I was borne to closter, kirk, or queir.
In ane niydding, quhilk paine l)ene tyll deplore."

Knox tells the same story in very similar words, but
with a grim humour and satisfaction which give it quite
a different point: "Now becaus the wether was hote
(for it was in Maij, as ye have heard), and his funerallis
could not suddanly be prepared, it was thowght best, to
keap him from styncking, to geve him great salt ynewcht,
a cope of lead, and a nuk in the boddome of the Sea-
toore (a place where many of Goddis childrene had bene
empreasoned befoir),' to await what exequeis his brethrene
the bischoppes wold prepare for him." ^

But though the Tragedie (the word is used in the
pre-Elizabethan sense) is utterly worthless as literature,
it is interesting as revealing Lindsay's views regarding
one of the most startling events of a stirring time. It
does not commit him to absolute approval of the act
of the assassins, but it shows his sympathy with them.
It shows also his strong adhesion to the P^nglish policy.
The misfortunes of the Cardinal and of Scotland are
traced largely to the triumph of the French party. The
abandonment of the proposals for an English marriage
and the breach of the " band of peace " are the causes
of all the wreck and ruin of the time.

With the affair of Cardinal Beaton the public life of
Lindsay draws near a close. In 1548 he was in Den-

' Works, I. 178.

LINDSA Y AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 3 1

mark attempting to negotiate a treaty. After that date
his name appears in connexion with no business of
importance ; but he held the office and performed the
duties of Lyon King to the end. Except for this the
last years of his life, so far as is known, were devoted
to literature. Hardly any details of those years have sur-
vived. The time, place, and manner of his death are
unknown; though the date can be fixed within pretty
narrow limits. He was alive on Jan. i6, 1555, and dead
before April 18 of that year.^

To the declining years of Lindsay's life belong two
of his longest works. The Historie and Testament of
Squyer Metdrum, and Ane Dialog betuix Experience and
ane Courteour, commonly known as The Monarchic.
Squyer Meldruvi is a tale of chivalrous adventure relat-
ing the exploits of a personal friend of the poet. Con-
trary to his custom Lindsay seems to have written this
tale mainly for its own sake. He does indeed proclaim
an ethical purpose in the opening lines : as other poets
have held up the lives of ancient heroes to be mirrors
of virtue and courage, so will he recount the deeds of
his contemporary. But there is no burning question in
his mind, no immediate reform to be aimed at. We
miss therefore that which forms the abiding interest of
Lindsay's work, its intimate relation to the history and
existing circumstances of his country. The absence of
this kind of interest would make most of the author's
work unreadable ; and though the Historie is otherwise
of much more than average merit, it is on this account
less attractive than many a ruder page in his other

^ See Laing's Memoir.

32 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

poems. The story of Squire Meldrum is written, as
beseems the subject, in the favourite measure of the old
romances. It is of all measures perhaps the easiest to
write, up to a certain degree of excellence; and as
Lindsay's very moderate powers of rliythm are not
strained the octosyllabic lines flow on in a clear and
forcible stream. The story is well told : there is less
irrelevancy, less redundancy, less false taste than we usually
find. But on the other hand no high level is anywhere
reached. It is like Scott's poetry, with all the variety of
versification, with the colouring, the grace of sentiment,
and even with part of the vigour (though Lindsay is vigo-
rous) left out. If, therefore, we accept the view that The
Historie of Sqiiyer Meldriivi is his greatest work, the
niche of the Lyon King in literature must be small.
But this criticism is possible only if we view Lindsay
simply and solely as a versifier. In point of fact he
was a reformer as much as Knox was, and a versifier
chiefly that he might be a reformer. To ignore this is
to leave the man himself out, to criticise him without
that sympathy which alone makes criticism of any value.
Very different is the last, the longest, the most pro-
foundly earnest of all his works. The Monarchic. Its date
is fixed at the year 1553 by a computation of time within
the poem itself. Everywhere there are marks that it is the
work of an old man whose task is now to learn to die.
It is also the work of a weary man whose dearest hopes
have been disappointed. More than once Lindsay breaks
out in prayer, dignified from its heartfelt earnestness, for
purity, for true religion, for all that may lift his country
from its miserable condition. For the gloom which hangs

LINDSAY AND THE VVEDDERBURNS. Zl

over The Monnrchie is not a personal and selfish one.
The author's desire for himself is summed up in the wish
to be at rest. But rest was impossible for Lindsay while
the country he had served from boyhood was still torn and
rent from within and from without, while the evils against
which he had consistently striven were still rampant ; and
so he lifts his dying voice for the last time in a long
protest against abuses, civil and spiritual, against the
tyranny of nobles, the pride of prelates, the oppression of
power in all its forms. But he is too worn in spirit to wield
effectually his favourite weapon, satire. In a dialogue
between Experience and a Courtier, in the plainest and
directest terms, without trick or artifice, he expounds the
causes of the evils of the commonweal. He lays his
finger on the disordered pulse of the country, and names
the disease.

If Lindsay had been an artist, if he had understood the
supreme importance of selection and condensation. The
Monarchie would have been a great work, not because of
poetic talent, but from sheer weight of earnestness. Un-
fortunately no man ever less comprehended the importance
of selection ; and in consequence the poem is in great part
worthless. No better plan occurs to him than to throw his
ideas into the form of a universal history, in which he traces
the fortunes of humanity from Adam to the day of doom,
and even a little after it. No one cares to hear in his
verse the story of the fall, of the flood, of the building of
Babel, of the four great monarchies. It is when from time
to time he refers to his own country, or when his earnest-
ness for truth almost rises to a cry, that he shows his genu-
ine strength. He is fully himself only where he warns the

34 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

tyrant lords and barons that small mercy awaits them at the
Judgment, or where he examines the double monarchy,
temporal and spiritual, of the Papacy. For more and
more as time went on the dispute about religion drew
everything else into its vortex, so tliat men who, like
Lindsay, were interested in public affairs, and yet not so
immersed in their current as to be drowned in details,
fixed their eyes upon this dispute as that the solution of
which carried all the rest along with it. As The Monarchic
is more direct and definite than The Satyre, it affords better
grounds for forming a judgment as to the exact length to
which Lindsay was prepared to go ; and with respect to the
literary leader of the attack on the Church, it is worth while
to come to some conclusion on the point.

Only the prejudice which rages over the debatable
ground of religion could so long have blinded multitudes
of men to the fact, certain a priori and established by
ample testimony, that what we call Protestant opinions
were the result of growth, not the creation of a moment,
the work of a single mind, or the effect of some sudden
rush of inspiration. Through the labours of men like
Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart the way was prepared
for Knox ; and Knox himself, not only in his unregenerate
youth, but even in the early days of his reforming zeal,
accepted many articles of faith and many practices which
he afterwards denounced with all the warmth of which
language is capable. The same is true of the literary party
whose sympathies went with the Reformers. Lindsay is
justly ranked as a Reformer. Few indeed of the profes-
sional theologians exercised as much influence as he; but
his life and death lie before the time when the Reformation

1

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 35

first took shape. Before the signature of the Band of
Association of December 3, 1557, which first joined
together the body afterwards known as the Lords of the
Congregation, reform was a vague aspiration, and sym-
pathy with it might be compatible with much difference
of opinion.

Lindsay's position is exceptionally clear. He was never
a Reformer in the sense of definitely rejecting the authority
of the Papacy; nor had he any objection to prelacy as a
form of Church government. It was the abuses which had
grown up in the Church of Rome which roused his ire, no
theoretic conviction of the unscriptural character of the
system. Purity of administration more than change of
doctrine was what he demanded. He reiterated again and
again the conviction that the temporal sovereignty of the
Popes and the wealth of the Church were the prime sources
of all the evil. " O Empriour Constantyne," he makes
the " religious men " in the place of torment exclaim in
The Dretne^

"O Empriour Constantyne,
We may wyit thy possessioun poysonabyll
Of all our great punytioun and pyne " ;

and the note thus struck in the first of Lindsay's poems
still sounds in the last. Let the prelates lead chaste lives,
be the protectors, not the oppressors of the poor, and do
their duty as preachers and teachers of religion : these are
his demands.

But besides a willingness to own the authority of the
Pope, provided the Pope would abate his high pretensions
to temporal supremacy and reform himself and his
subordinates, we can detect in Lindsay an acceptance.

36 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

either absolute or modified, of other doctrines which were
the special abhorrence of the later Scottish Protestants.
If he was not prepared to worship the Virgin, he was certainly
willing to pay her the most marked reverence, and she was
still to him at the end of his life the "virgene quene of quenis."
In his views with regard to the use of images he stands
half-way between the ultimate theory of the Reformers and
the practice of the Catholic Church. He condemns the
worship of images or any approach to it, but allows their
use as an aid to devotion —

"Seand the Image of the Rude,
Men suld remember on the blude."

In Other words, he accepts the Catholic theory, while he
condemns the abuses which had been suffered to gather
round it.

In these respects Lindsay would not have satisfied the
later Reformers : on other points he has less of sympathy
with the old faith. Questions purely doctrinal, though
they are not absent, fill less space in his mind than matters
in which sacerdotal usage or tradition infringe upon secular
interests or war against public morals. The rapacity and
extortion of the clergy, the iniquity of the corse-
present, on these themes his wrath is at white heat. Celi-
bacy is condemned in the interests of public morals,
pilgrimages chiefly on the same ground. The latter theme
Lindsay handles in a way which forcibly recalls The Holy
Fair. He has not the fine touch of Burns, but the sub-
stance of his verse is the same ; and it is highly interesting
to notice that when the reformed religion itself needed
reformation, the new scourge of the Kirk had precisely
the same material for satire ready to his hand. From the

LINDSA V AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 17

fact that some of the Scottish clergy have never forgiven
Burns, not for his sins but for his sarcasm on their order,i
we can form some judgment how the Romish clergy must
have hated Lindsay, and must wonder all the more that,
armed as they were with fire and sword, they never wreaked
their vengeance upon him.

Even when his theme naturally suggested a doctrinal
handling, Lindsay loved to view it from the civil side.
Thus, Purgatory, which he had previously accepted in
submission to the true Kirk, but afterwards definitely
rejected, he viewed as the most potent means by which
the priests had climbed to greatness. For that reason
they had no choice but to hold by it, and for that reason
too those who wished to reform them were obliged to
wrest it from their grasp. In the same way, Lindsay
objected to auricular confession on the ground that the
laying bare of the soul to a man whose own mind was
dark put in unscrupulous hands an awful power.

It seems evident then that, while Lindsay did not
contemplate or desire an absolute breach with the Church
of Rome, while his position and policy were far from being
the position and policy which ultimately found favour and
under which the old order was swept clean away, he did
wish and strenuously advocate very radical reforms. He
was in spirit a Protestant ; but, because he was an early Pro-
testant, he did not present all the features which are
visible at a later date. We may be quite certain that,
had he lived two or three years longer, he would have
been found among the Lords of the Congregation ; and,
had his days been still further extended, life-long servant

■* See Shairp's Burns.

38 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

of the Stuarts though he had been, he would have joined
the opposition led by Knox against Mary. The later
development of the Scottish Reformation was determined
almost as much by the force of circumstances as by delib-
erate choice. It is puerile to fancy that all the doctrines
of Knox were arrived at through an unbiased study of
Scripture, and by a clear vision of divine truth. Every
man's opinions are largely made for him ; they are
in the making every day ; and Lindsay, had he been
in the whirl and strife, would have been led to adopt
opinions and advocate measures which to his calmer
judgment in his retirement did not seem necessary or ex-
pedient,

No elaborate summing-up of Lindsay's work and position
is necessary : he has spoken for himself. He was not a
great poet; although in a few passages, such as the prologue
to T/ie Dretne and the prologue to The Monarchic, he
shows the marks of a poetic mind, imagination was not
his strongest faculty. His own words, " I did never sleip
on Pernasso," had perhaps a deeper truth than he realised.
His work is inartistic, harsh in versification, formless in style,
marred by a coarseness which it would be difficult to
parallel, impossible to outdo. All attempts to palliate his
defects are vain. The appeal to the coarseness of the age
is but a partial excuse, and any other is out of the question.
The Kirk was not without excuse in putting sternly down
exhibitions which admitted of ribaldry and licentiousness
such as we find in The Satyre of the Thric Estaitis. And
yet, the more Lindsay is read, the firmer will be the con-
viction that all this is external to his work. Despite his
faults he still retains a true claim to greatness, namely,

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 39

that of being the literary leader in the Reformation of the
life and faith of his time.

For this task he was much better equipped than he was
to enter into competition for the poetic laurel with his
predecessor Dunbar or even with Gavin Douglas. He
had the keen humour which has characterised his country-
men from Dunbar to Carlyle. He was a close observer
with ample opportunities of knowing all classes ; and he
had the shrewd sense necessary to sift his experience. He
was not deeply learned ; but he had a sufficient fund of
information to supply him with copious historical and
traditionary illustrations whenever he wanted them. The
result is such as we might expect. Lindsay's satire is by
no means highly polished ; but it is a sound serviceable
weapon, and it cuts. But to the making of successful satire
— meaning by this, satire which influences action — there go
certain moral qualities as well as intellectual powers ; and
Lindsay possessed these too. He was a man of singular
tenacity of character : what his mind once grasped
it held. He was single-minded : only once or twice does
he speak for personal advancement, and then he does it
with vigour and decision but with dignity. Above all, he
had the courage to brave the vengeance of powerful enemies
and to hold firm although he saw others suffer for
offences less than his. It was by virtue of these quali-
ties that Lindsay became not only the first satirist (in
the vernacular) of his time, but a power in the State as
well. He carried the torch sometimes when there was no
one else to bear it. He was influential with the King.
He was persevering. He knew that abuses take a great
deal of killing, and he redoubled his blows once and again

40 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

until they took effect. He lived to see some of the reforms
he had advocated actually carried out and more of them
in train : a few years longer and he would have seen all
and more than all his aspirations for religion in a fair
way of being realised.

While the motives of Lindsay were half political, half
theological, there were other versifiers whose inspiration
was entirely drawn from hatred of the erring Church of
Rome. The most curious literary relic of the age of the
Reformation is the astounding collection known as The
Glide and Godly Ballates} Neither the date nor the
authorship of this remarkable book can be regarded as
certain. Tradition and several old authorities concur in
assigning it to the Wedderburns of Dundee ; and though
modern criticism has suggested doubt,- it is reasonably safe
to follow the authority of Calderwood ^ and Row,* sup-
ported by James Melville's Diary ^ and by the fact that the
collection soon after the date of the earliest known edition
was popularly spoken of by the name of the Dundee
Psalms. No doubt it is of the nature of a miscellany, and
other hands than those of the Wedderburns may have
contributed to it ; but the natural inference from its un-
broken association with their name is that their share in
it was so great as to make it practically their work.

'The full title is worth tjuoting :— " Ane compendious booke of
godly and spiritual! songs, collectit out of sundiie partes of the
Scripture, with sundrie of other ballates changed out of prophane
sanges, for avoyding of sinne and harlotrie, with augmentation of
sundrie gude and godly ballates not contained in the first edition."
^See Laing's Introduction to The Gude and Godly Ballates.
■■'I. 142-3. *HisL, ]-). 6. "p. 23, Wodrow.

LINDSAY AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 41

There were three brothers Wedderburn of Dundee, all
of pronounced literary tastes. James, the eldest, has
already been mentioned in connexion with the early
drama. It is his two younger brothers, John and Robert,
who are believed to have been chiefly responsible for The
Glide and Godly Ballatcs. John was twice driven into
exile on account of religion. On the first occasion he
took refuge in Germany, where he was still more deeply
tainted with heresy. Calderwood says that he translated
many of Luther's hymns and the Psalms into Scottish
metre, and also turned a number of loose songs to the
purposes of religion. He returned to Scotland after the
death of James V. in 1542, but was compelled by Cardinal
Beaton to flee to England, where he died in 1556. Robert
Wedderburn led a quieter life than his two elder brothers,
though he too was not free from trouble of a similar
character. He retired into France during the ascendency
of Beaton, returned after the death of the Cardinal, suc-
ceeded his uncle Robert Barrie as Vicar of Dundee, and,
so far as is known, held that oftice till his death. This fact
is advanced as an argument against the common account
of his connexion with The Glide afid Godly Ballates; but in
those years of confusion there were many anomalies, and
notwithstanding his official position he may have written
some of the parodies.

The question of the date is intimately connected with
that of the authorship of this collection. If the Wedder-
burns were the authors we must date its beginnings be-
tween the years 1539-46, when they were all objects of
suspicion, and when John Wedderburn is expressly stated
to have been translating from the German, etc. This

42 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

renders the Wedderburns' authorship of The Ballates all the
more probable ; for there is evidence in them of German
influence.^ It is true that the oldest known edition belongs
to the year 1578, and that no reference to the book can be
discovered earlier than 1570 ; and it is also true that in the
collection as we now have it there are allusions to the great
revolution of 1560. But this, far from settling, hardly
affects the question. The probability is that The Glide and
Godly Ballates are scattered over a period of at least twenty
years. They would be circulated at first separately as
fugitive ballads, and very likely the idea of gathering them
together was only an afterthought begotten of their popul-
arity. If so, the absence of early references to them is
easily explained : the fugitive pieces of popular poetry are
never important enough to attract attention until they are
threatening to disappear; and had these Godly Ballates
dealt with any other subject than religion they might have
passed unnoticed and uncollected for generations.

The Glide and Godly Ballates is a unique book. It
is partly satirical and iconoclastic, partly dogmatic and
reconstructive. It seeks at once to attack Popery, and
to inculcate the positive doctrines of the Protestants in
the way best calculated to appeal to the popular under-
standing and to dwell in the popular memory. This
conjunction of aims accounts for the character of the
book. It is prefaced with a short prose statement of
some of the most important articles of Protestant faith.
But the authors were practical enough to see that rhyme
was the only instrument which could overcome the diffi-

^ See Prof. Mitchell's lecture on " The Wedderburns and their
Work."

LINDSAY AND THE IVEDDERBURNS. 43

culty arising from the limited distribution of books ; and
accordingly the bulk of it is in verse. The Ten Com-
mandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the effects of
Baptism and of the Lord's Supper, are all set forth in
metre. After these comes a collection of "spirituall
sangis," or hymns, with paraphrases of certain passages
of Scripture. These in turn are followed by metrical
versions of a number of the Psalms, described as " trans-
lated out of Enchiridion Fsalmorum." The end of the
book, by far the most remarkable part, consists of miscel-
laneous pieces of a lyrical character, many of them parodies
of the popular songs of the time.

The earlier parts of the collection call for little special
remark beyond a recognition of their importance in their
own day. They were a factor in the literary contribution
to [the settlement of the dispute of the churches. They
gave the people something definite to set in the place of
the Popery which was attacked, and, above all, they put
that something in a portable shape. The hymns are
generally translations or paraphrases from the German.
From a literary point of view these earlier parts are, as a
rule, vigorous, but often heavy and unrhythmical. The
parodies are much more interesting, though they are also,
to the modern mind, more questionable. They throw
a few rays of light on the dark subject of early Scottish
songs ; and they are in themselves pointed and telling,
far beyond anything else that the Wedderburns have left.
The reason is partly that a poet of but moderate gifts
is helped by having some guide to his imagination ; but
partly also because the work of criticism and destruction
was always that which was best done in those days. Men

44 SCOTTISH LITER ATU RE.

lived in a state of moral warfare, and they were most
themselves when their hand was raised against their
neighbour. This side of their work is however a delicate
one to touch upon. Knox, the apostle of all that was
highest in the Scottish Reformation, handled the mysteries
of the Catholic faith in a manner which no free-thinker
with a grain of reverence left in his mind would now per-
mit himself to use ; and Buchanan, the embodiment of
scholarly taste, saw nothing offensive in such attacks.
And what Buchanan and Knox did in Scotland, other
leaders did in other countries. The authors of The Gude
and Godly Ballates sinned in good company; but the fact
remains that some of their parodies are unquotable, some-
times for irreverence, in other cases for coarseness. That
founded on Hay, trix, trim goe trix in particular is a
marvellous specimen of riotous and seemingly delighted
satire on the sensuality of the Romish priesthood and
religious orders. It must have been effective against them,
but we may doubt whether it helped in the suppression of
"sinne and harlotrie." Blots of this kind have been
excused or palliated on the ground that the grossest of the
ballads are less gross than much of Lindsay. This is true,
but not satisfactory ; for, in the first place, Lindsay is inde-
fensible, and, secondly, his grossness occurs in a different
context. Byron's Vision of Judginent has a right to exist
in literature, but not side by side with the services of the
Church ; and JoJui Gilpitt would be out of place among
Hymns Ancient and Modern. The following verses give
a good idea of the satiric point of the godly ballates : —

"Of the fals fyre of Puryatorie
Is nocht left in ane sponk ;

LINDSA V AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 45

Thairfoir sayis Gedde, way is me,
Gone is preist, freir, and monk.

"The reik, sa woundir deir, thay solde
For money, gold, and landis ;
Quhile halfe the riches on the molde,
Is seasit in thair handis.

" Thay knew na thing bot couetice,
And lufe of paramouris :
Thay lat the souHs burn and bis
Of all thair Foundatouris.

"At corps presence thay wold sing,
For ryches to slokkin the fyre ;
Bot all pure folk that had na thing
Was skaldit baine and lyre.

"Zit sat thay heich in Parliament
Lyke Lordis of greit renowne :
Quhill now that the New Testament
Hes it and thame brocht downe.

" And thocht thay fuffe at it, and blaw,
Ay quhile thair bellyis rj'ue ;
The mair thay blaw, full weill thay knaw,
The mair it dois misthryue. "

The next piece is founded upon a popular tune mentioned
in The Coviplaynt of Scotland, and illustrates the relation
between The Gude and Godly Ballates and popular
poetry : —

" With huntis vp, with huntis vp.
It is now perfite day,
Jesus, our King, is gane in hunting,
Quha lykis to speid thay may.

" Ane cursit fox lay hid in rox
This lang and mony ane day,
Deuouring scheip, quhile he micht creip,
Naue micht him schaip away.

46 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

" It did him gude to laip the blude
Of zoung and tender lamniis ;
Nane culd he mis, for all was his,
The zoung anis with thair dammis.

" The hunter is Christ, that huntis in haist,
The hundis ar Peter and Paull,
The Paip is the foxe, Rome is the rox,
That rubbis vs on the gall.

" That cruell beist, he neuer ceist,
Be his vsurpit power,
Under dispens to get our penneis,
Our saulis to deuoir.

" Quha culd deuyse sic merchandise,
As he had thair to sell,
Onles it war proud Lucifer,
The greit maister of Hell.

" He had to sell the Tantonie bell,
And pardonis thairin was ;
Remissioun of sinnis in auld schiep skinnis,
Our saulis to bring from grace.

"With buUis of leid, quhyte wax and reid.
And vther quhylis with grene,
Closit in ane box, this vsit the fox,
Sic peltrie was neuer sene.

" With dispensatiounis and ol)ligatiounis,
According to his law.
He wald dispens, for money from hence,
With thame he neuer saw.

" To curs and ban the sempill pure man,
That had nocht to fle the pane ;
Bot quhen he had payit all to ane myte.
He mon be absoluit than.

"To sum, God wot, he gaue tot quot.
And vther sum pluralitie ;
Bot first with penneis he mon dispens.
Or ellis it will nocht be.

LINDSA Y AND THE WEDDERBURNS. 47

" Kingis to marie, and sum to tarie,
Sic is his power and micht,
Quha that hes gold, with him will he hold,
Thocht it be contrair all richt,

" O blissit Peter, the fox is ane lier,
Thow knawis weill it is nocht sa,
Quhill at the last, he salbe downe cast,
His peltrie, pardonis, and all."^

The difference between the work of Lindsay, as bear-
ing on the Reformation, and that of the Wedderburns
is very apparent. Lindsay is more weighty, more sober,
more moderate in his criticisms. The Wedderburns
frequently exhibit all the excess of parodists. The dif-
ference was probably in part one of years. Lindsay was
an older man than any of the Wedderburns, his work
on the whole of a somewhat earlier date. Partly also
it may be ascribed to difference of character. Lindsay's
method was the more appropriate for opening the ques-
tion; that of the Wedderburns was admirably adapted
to foster and deepen hostility to the Church of Rome
once that hostility had fairly taken root among the
people. At an earlier date The Gude and Godly Ballates
would not only have exposed their authors to the
vengeance of the Church, but would have turned the
current of popular sympathy in the opposite direction.
In both their literary instruments the Reformers were
fortunate. The wide and enduring popularity of Sir
David Lindsay proves this in the one case ; while the
countrymen of the political philosopher who said that

^The English had also parodies of a like cast. There is one on this
very song by John Thome. See Halliwell, moral play of Wit and
Science.

4^ SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

who would could make the laws of a country if he might
make the songs, ^ will not be disposed to deny the
felicity of the idea of enlisting popular poetry on the
side of the new doctrines.

^Fletcher gives this as a quotation, l:>ut in such a way as to adopt the
sentiment.

CHAPTER II.

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION.

GEORGE BUCHANAN.

Before the year 1890 the only full account of the life
of George Buchanan was contained in the laborious but
unattractive memoir by David Irving. In that year
there appeared a scholarly and admirable biography of
the great Latinist by Mr. P. Hume Brown, who by the
skill and thoroughness with which he has done his work
has laid every student of Buchanan under a deep obliga-
tion. This biography is styled, " George Buchanan :
Humanist and Reformer " ; and was afterwards censured
on the ground that there is little in the spirit or works
of Buchanan to entitle him to the name of Reformer.
The biographer knew better than his critic. If by
"reformer" must be understood a person with a new
theological system, it is true that Buchanan was none ;
but if we use the word in a wider sense as indicating
the spirit of the man and the nature of his influence,
the use of it in this case is amply justified. In the
beginning of his life Buchanan was, as will presently
appear, a powerful and effective satirist of abuses in
religion ; at its close he worked in harmony with the
then triumphant leaders of the Protestant party ; and

D

5 O SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

some of his principal writings were calculated, either
directly from their dealing with religious topics, or in-
directly from their bearing upon the cognate questions of
politics, to further their principles. In Lindsay and the
Wedderburns we hear the voice of literature appealing to
the people against the corruptions of the Church of
Rome ; in Buchanan the appeal is addressed to the
world of scholarship. Doubtless Buchanan has other in-
terests besides the interest in purity of religion, and even
stronger interests \ he is the Erasmus of the Scottish
Reformation, while Knox plays the part of the Scottish
Luther. But this only means that we must add
"humanist" to "reformer," not that we must delete
either.

It may be questioned whether there was any man in
Britain during the sixteenth century who enjoyed so
wide a reputation as George Buchanan. Now, there is
probably no Englishman and there is certainly no Scotch-
man of equal power whose w'orks are so entirely
neglected. A vague idea of his personality has survived
in his native country. His caustic sayings were of a
kind to dwell in the memory; and his connexion with
the education of James VL impressed upon the popular
mind some of the more prominent features of his char-
acter. His stoical demeanour, unawcd by royalty and
unbending in the discharge of duty, won the admiration
of his countrymen and gave him a place in popular
tradition ; but how unworthy and degrading that place
became is proved by the association of his name with
the contemptible and ribald collection of stories entitled
The Witty atid Entertauiino; Exploits of George Buchanan.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 5 I

Comparatively few have an intelligent notion of the
nature and scope of his works ; and the stereotyped
criticisms which have passed current from generation
to generation are sufficient evidence that some of those
few have talked about them rather than read them.
His only works which are popularly known by name
are the History of Scotland and the paraphrase of
the Psalms, regarding the latter of which his bio-
grapher Irving wrote in the early part of the present
century that it was read in many schools as a text-book
of the Latin language. In the present day many of the
class of readers to whom Irving refers, and not a few of
their teachers, would be unable to say in what language
the famous paraphrase was composed.

The chief cause of this oblivion, which affects not
only Buchanan, but a vast amount of very respectable
talent besides,^ lies in the language chosen. It restricts the
audience at once to those who have a knowledge of Latin ;
and even of these the majority are too fully occupied with the
native masters of the language to have much time to spare
for the scholars of the Renaissance. These are men who
stand in no organic connexion with any body of literature
comparable with the great national literatures of ancient
or modern times ; and consequently those among them who
are really worth study miss it because they lack the support
which a great writer derives from his fellows. They may
be ransacked for purposes of research, but they are seldom
studied from the point of view of literature. The neglect
is both intelligible and in most cases perfectly just. But

^ The Deliciae Poetarum Scotoruin alone represents a work! of forgotten
lore and buried power.

5 2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

Buchanan's case is exceptional. He was a king among
his tribe ; he lived in a stirring period ; and his wide
activity was not entirely confined to letters. Persecuted
for his attacks on the monastic orders at a time when
Catholicism was still the religion of Scotland, actively
engaged in the ])roceedings against Queen Mary, and
author of a work which deeply influenced the English
opponents of Charles I., his life and writings everywhere
touch the most important historical movements.

George Buchanan was born about the beginning of
February, 1506, near Killearn, in Stirlingshire. He sprang
of a race " magis vetusta quam opulenta." He was one
of a family of eight children, who were left by the early
death of the father in a condition of extreme poverty.
Their mother was a woman of strong character, and she
not only succeeded in bringing up all her children, but
gave to at least some of them the most liberal education
that the age afforded. In the case of George she was
assisted by her brother, James Heriot, who, on the
strength of the promise which the boy had shown in the
schools of the neighbourhood, sent him, in the year 1520,
to Paris. But Buchanan's life was never a smooth one.
After two years his uncle died ; and, pressed by poverty
and disease, he returned to his native country. Ill health
kept him idle for nearly a year; but in 1523 he joined
the forces which Albany had brought from France, and
took part in the inglorious expedition which ended in the
fruitless siege of Wark Castle. He says he took this step
from a desire to learn the military art, and the reason is
notable : universal curiosity is one of the features of
Buchanan's character. Exposure again brought on illness ;

I
I

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 53

but after an invalid winter we find him in the spring of
1525 at St. Andrews, whither he went to hear John
Major, "(jui turn ibi dialecticen, aut verius sophisticen, in
extrema senectute docebat." Despite the terms of this
reference, Major was only about fifty-five years of age at
that time, and he survived till 1550.

Not only here, but uniformly, Buchanan sneers at Major,
speaking of him in one of his epigrams as " solo cognomine
Major."^ Nevertheless Major was a man of European
reputation, and ranked among the first scholars and
philosophers of the day. He had been trained at Paris,
and afterwards held the position of regent first at Glas-
gow, then at St. Andrews. At Glasgow he had the
honour of teaching Knox, and although he never identified
himself with the reformers he considerably influenced the
Reformation. On the authority of Scripture and of common
morality he freely criticised the grosser abuses of life and
doctrine current among the Romish clergy; and these
criticisms, which would have been dangerous in another,
were submissively accepted from the mouth of a man who
was recognised as a faithful son of the Church and one of
the most learned of living theologians. Thus it came to
pass that Major was made a sort of referee between the
two parties — the reformers sheltering themselves under
the authority of his name, and the party of the old Church
listening with respect to the judgment of their own greatest
teacher. But perhaps the very moderation which enabled
Major to hold this position is the secret of the dissatis-
faction of his fiery pupil Buchanan ; and his fidelity to

1 The words are, however, adopted from Major himself (Hume
Brown's Buchanan, p. 71).

54 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

scholastic methods, already becoming old-fashioned, was
sure to offend an intellect which could never be held by
the cobwebs of custom.

In 1526 Buchanan followed Major to Paris. There,
apparently in 1529, he began to teach in the College of
Ste. Barbe, and has left on record his experiences in the
fine elegy, Qiiam tnisera sit conditio docentium literas
hiiniajiiores Lutetiae. But notwithstanding poverty and
other miseries Buchanan always retained a grateful affec-
tion for Paris and always showed a readiness to return
thither. Help came to him in his need from a young
Scottish nobleman, Gilbert Kennedy, Earl of Cassillis,
who was then residing in Paris. He employed Buchanan as
his tutor, and retained him in that office for several years.

The date of Buchanan's return to Scotland cannot be
precisely determined ; but it is certain he was there in
the early part of 1536. The state of Scotland had
radically changed during his absence. Power had passed
from the Douglases into the hands of James V. himself.
The religious controversy, stilled since the days of the
Lollards of Kyle, had been reopened by Patrick Hamil-
ton ; and Lindsay, even if The Satyre of the Thrie
Estaitis was still unwritten, had dealt several hard
blows at the lives and teaching of the priesthood.
Buchanan was more than ready for this movement. In
Paris he had fallen as he says " in flammam Lutheranae
sectae"; and he brought with him probably a wider
knowledge of the doctrinal matters in dispute than was
current in a country where the theology of Major was
still the chief study of both parties. He brought
with him also as deep a dislike of the monks and their

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 55

lives as any one could well feel. His hostility soon
found expression in writing. After his return from the
Continent he lived for a time in the country with the
Earl of Cassillis, and there he wrote the short satire on
the Franciscans entitled Somnium^ the earliest of his
attacks upon that order, and also his first appearance in
a field which Lindsay had already made his own. But
Buchanan's mode of handling his weapons differs as
widely from Lindsay's as the audience of the learned
differs from the people. Instead of the rude bludgeon
style of the vernacular poet, whose literary merit is
vigour and whose practical merit is suitability to the
purpose in view, we have the polish of the scholar and
the delicate touches of the literary artist. The Somniiim
is closely imitated from, one of Dunbar's poem's pub-
lished in Laing's edition under the title of The Visitation
of St. Francis. In the Somniutn St. Francis appears to
the writer in a dream, bearing the garments of the
order, which he bids the dreamer don. The latter
objects that they do not fit his shoulders. He who
wears them must be servile and shameless, must cheat
and wheedle and feign ; and after all the cowl seldom
reaches heaven — " Vix monachis illic creditur esse locus."
Even on earth it is to bishops, not to monks, that
monuments are raised and honours paid. The poet con-
cludes by begging of the saint, if he is so concerned for
his welfare, to give him rather a mitre —

" Quilibet hac alius mendicet veste superbus :
At mihi da mitram, purpureamque togam."

^Dedication oi Franciscamis. This dedication is dated 1564, and
speaks of tlie Soimtiiim as composed " ante annos fere triginta."

S6 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

This piece was only the first of a series which won
for Buchanan the persevering hatred of the Franciscans
and soon drove him into a long exile. Shortly after he
had written it he was called from his retirement to take
charge of the education of an illegitimate son of the
king, whose baptismal name, James, has led to his being
confounded sometimes with his more famous half-brother
James Stuart, afterwards Earl of Murray. At court
Buchanan found that the fame of the Somnium had pre-
ceded him. The Franciscans were attempting to poison
all ears against him ; but James had his own reasons for
looking with a favourable eye on their critic, and instead
of administering a rebuke he promptly urged Buchanan
to write a sharper satire against them.^ The result of this
request was the Palinodia, which is printed in two parts
at the end of the Fratres Fraterrimi. His own account
of the matter is that being at once unwilling to offend
the king and afraid to provoke further the anger of the
Franciscans, he wrote a poem so ambiguous that it could
be read either favourably or unfavourably ; but the only
result of his ingenuity was tliat he displeased both
parties, and was required by the King to apply stimuli
"qui non modo summam perstringerent cutem, sed in
intima usque praecordia penetrarent " ; and thus he was
led on to write the Fra7iciscanus.

Such is the account of the origin of those great
satires given in the Dedication of the Fra?iciscanus to
the F.arl of Murray. It is repeated with little variation
in the Vita; and critic after critic has with admirable
docility accepted it as a simple statement of fact. But
^Dedication of Franciscanus.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 57

in view of the character of the Palinodia it is absolutely-
impossible to regard the narrative as anything but irony^;
to take it literally is to cast a slur upon the intelligence
of James. If in the Somjiiiini the poet chastised his
enemies with whips, in the Palinodia he chastises them
with scorpions. There is no reason whatever to doubt the
statement that it was also at the King's request that the
Franciscanus was begun ; but probably it was his delight
in the Palinodia, not his dissatisfaction with it, that
caused him to wish for more from the same pen. At
the King's command then Buchanan again began to
write. He submitted his work, still unfinished, to James;
but in fear of the enmity of the Franciscans, who Avere
already sufficiently hostile, he refrained from divulging it
to anyone else. The precaution was vain. Buchanan
fell a victim to the persecution of 1539. He was thrown
into prison, but escaped through the window when his
guards were asleep.^ The story even as it stands with-
out comment in Buchanan's History is far from credit-
able to James. He had urged Buchanan on against the
Franciscans when he himself was hostile to them ; but
the moment his policy changed he abandoned the tutor
of his son to their vengeance. In the Vita the same
story wears an uglier look : " Per amicos ex aula
certior factus se peti, et Cardinalem Betonium a Rege
pecunia vitam ejus mercari, elusis custodibus in Angliam

^Mr. Hume Brown (whose study of Buchanan has been of the most
thorough kind) conjectures that " alterations and additions may have
been made on the poems as originally written " (p. 93). They must
have been rewritten if we are to take Buchanan's account literally ; and
it is to be remembered that that account refers to the poems as we know
them. - Buchanan, Opera, I. 277, Ruddiman.

5 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

contendit."^ So insecure was life in those days that it
was considered matter for special thankfulness that he
escaped both the freebooters of the Border and the
plague then raging in the north of England. It was
probably now that he addressed the lines to Cromwell
and to Henry VIII. which are printed in the Miscellanies
with the epitaph on Nicholas Bacon, "tamdiu Britannici
Regni secundum columen," wedged in between them.
But these verses failed to bring the reward which
Buchanan perhaps hoped for ; and making no stay in
England he passed over into France, where he was lost
for many years to Scottish affairs.

The Franciscanus thus interrupted was left untouched
during Buchanan's long exile. A quarter of a century after-
wards it was resumed in widely different circumstances,
and was published in 1564 with a dedication to the Earl
of Murray. The Protestant party was then triumphant,
and the satirist of the monks might expect reward
instead of punishment. Though however the Franciscanus
as a published work belongs to Buchanan's old age, in
spirit and plan and partly in execution it belongs, as
has been seen, to an earlier period. With the Fratres
Fraterriiiii, a collection of miscellaneous pieces directed
against the Romish Church, it forms one great division
of Buchanan's works, the authorship of which entitles
him to rank as one of the great literary champions of
the Scottish Reformation. It requires only to be more
widely known and fairly weighed to rank him also as
one of the foremost satirists of all time.

^ Knox {Work, I. 71) roundly asserts tliat James "caused putt hands
in that notable man, Maistir Georj^e IJalquhanan."

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 59

That which renders the vast mass of mediaeval and
modern Latin poetry unreal and its study a vanity is
its artificiality both o'i subject and treatment. It stands
apart from life and its sympathies, and wastes itself in
the attempt to revivify a dead past. This objection
applies to much of Buchanan's own work ; but in the
religious satires he had found a subject emphatically real
and emphatically of the present. Just as the War of
Independence had formed the Scottish nation in the past,
so the struggle for a pure religion was destined to colour
and direct the national life for generations to come.
It is his adoption of this as his theme that gives
strength to Buchanan's satire. The greatest satire must
be true. It need not be, and it hardly can be, accurate
in detail ; but it must be the result of a profound con-
viction resting on a solid basis of reality. And Buchanan's
satire was true. Sincerity is written in every line of the
Palinodia and the Franciscanus. Their author sees in
the monks an embodied iniquity which cannot be re-
formed and must be destroyed. The hopelessness of
reformation within the Church struck other observers
besides Buchanan. Lindsay felt it ; and those who
attacked religious abuses in a more regular way were
soon driven in despair to give up all thought of com-
promise. It is not necessary at present to consider
whether this view was right or no : it was the view
generally taken at the time, and it accounts for much
bitterness in word and subsequently in act. No doubt
the opinions of the reformers and satirists were partial
and prejudiced. There was a better side to monastic
life which finds no recognition in them ; and the

6o SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

enormities they paint were not universal. But the
satirist's business is not to depict the good as well as
the evil of his victim : he is justified if he bases his
strictures on a broad foundation of guilt. Such a
foundation Juvenal had, and on it he builds up the
fabric of an utterly corrupt society. Buchanan from
similar materials creates the image of a corrupt church,
and we recognise in it also the features of truth.

Though the voice of tradition has pronounced in
favour of the version of the Psalms, there ought to be
little hesitation now in assigning the foremost place
among Buchanan's works to the satires on the Church ;
and of these the greatest is the Palinodia. Notwithstanding
wide differences it courts comparison with the religious
satires of Burns. There is the same merciless logic
probing all the weak places of the faith, the same scorn
of hypocrisy and determination to uphold the truth.
Burns is superior to Buchanan in that poetic grace of
mind which allows him to pause in his satire and enjoy
the beauties of a " simmer Sunday morn " ; but he is not
more than equal in force and point, and he is hardly equal
in conciseness and rapidity. Both poets suffered in their
several ways for their championship of truth, but both
remained unanswered and unanswerable.

In the Palinodia ^ Buchanan writes with bitter scorn,
all the more effective for the thin veil under which it is
covered. A style always keen and incisive, sometimes

^ I speak of the Palinodia as one poem, and it is one in plan though
printed in two parts in Buchanan's collected works. The first part
relates the manner in which he was brought to see the error of his ways,
and the second contains the recantation proper.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 6l

noble and eloquent, drives the truth home. He lays bare
the sins of the monks one by one until it seems as if the
whole Franciscan order was one mass of corruption. The
effect would be almost nauseating were it not relieved by
the plan of the poem and by the irony under which the true
meaning is veiled. The design bears a general resemblance
to Seneca's satire on the deification of Claudius, or, to
given an English example, to Byron's Vision of Jitdgment,
which is founded upon Seneca. The poet is borne in
dream above the golden stars and is dragged before the
tribunal of a stern judge with shaven head and angry
threatening look. All around are girt with one girdle
and clad in one colour, the colour of asses and wild
geese and flint. The judge, who is habited like the
rest, asks sternly how he dares mock the order which
awes both King and Pope, and bids his attendants strip
the culprit and make his limbs pay the penalty for his
tongue. An unmeasured punishment produces the desired
effect. When the offender gets a moment to breathe he
cries for mercy, praying that the order may flourish ever
holier, and always find old wives in plenty to believe.
He will retract everything and praise the name of the
brethren to the skies. Here begins an extraordinary series
of double meanings which must have been in Buchanan's
mind when he wrote that the piece was too ambiguous to
please the King : —

" Vobis relligio est, sincero ascuescere recto,
Relligio est, Christi facta fidemque sequi :

Raraque simplicitas, et rara modestia vobis,
Et virtus rara est, et probitatis honos :

Fastus inauditus, nullaque libidine victum
Robur, nee duro fracta labore manus."

62 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

But he was too much in earnest to leave his meaning

doubtful ; and even if any one was obtuse enough to miss

the significance of these lines, the scathing ridicule of the

conclusion is unmistakable. Under a thin disguise of

admiration he exposes the self-indulgence and pride, the

falsehood and lust of the monks. Theirs is the life of

calm repose undisturbed by the calls of duty. They reap

what others sow, leaving to the labourers the danger and

the pain. Their vow of poverty never stops their way to

luxury and wealth. They make capital out of their worst

passions, and win through them the reputation of exceeding

piety among the simple, though the clear-sighted may

laugh or grieve or gaze and be silent, each according to

his nature.

The Fraticiscaniis is by far the longest of Buchanan's

satires, and is in merit second only to the inimitable

Palinodia. In some respects it is even superior. It is

more restrained ; and though the plan hardly admits of

the display of such varied powers, it gives an opportunity

for a more systematic treatment of the vices of the

Franciscans. The poem opens with a short dialogue

between a youth who is eager to renounce the world and a

more experienced friend who warns him that he will not

find all as he expects in the cloisters. In an interesting

passage this friend, probably Buchanan himself, tells the

would-be devotee how he had been in boyhood seized

with a similar desire and had been saved by wise advice,^

' If this can be taken as autobiographical it throws some light on
Buchanan's early career. It has been asserted that he was himself
at one time a monk ; but of this there is no sufficient evidence, and
the probability is that he had only thought of the Church as a profes-
sion.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 63

which he repeats by way of warnuig. The men who don
the cowl are not miracles of learning, but the destitute, the
criminal, the lazy, the licentious, who hope to conceal their
vices under the cloak of religion. They gather wealth by
terrifying the dying into leaving their property to the
monastery. Men wonder that the ancients could believe
the fable of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth, yet they
themselves believe that the contemptible mannikin, who
but now hardly knew his letters and whom they would
not have trusted to clean a stable, under the cowl becomes
in a moment a marvel of wisdom and learning and honour.
The secret is that he walks with slow step, bent head,
eyes on the ground. He affects paleness, represses laughter
when anyone is near, squeezes tears from dry eyes in
praying, has a solemn formula for everything. In short,
he is hypocrisy incarnate. When the rudiments are
mastered, some old shaveling, blear-eyed, toothless, palsied,
and wrinkled teaches the mysteries — how to wring the
most from every class, from the rich matron and mer-
chant down to the penniless maid-servant ; how to enjoy
pleasures without dread of consequences ; how to v/ork the
confessional for personal ends ; how to sway the minds
of men by the dread of punishment and the hope of
reward. And so on in great detail. There are over nine
hundred lines in the Franciscaniis^ and there is a sting
in every line. The old monk instructing his younger
brethren is drawn with a masterly hand. Acute, cynical,
utterly devoid of conscience, he estimates calmly every
means by which he and they can increase their pleasures.
The dogmas of the Church are to him so many instruments
whereby he may gain his ends ; and they are nothing more.

64 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

The question is simply how to indulge passion with safety.
He will run no risks, for he can secure his end without
risk. Some of the lighter touches are delicious. The aged
monk going into the country is advised to get astride of
an ass or mule, as the precepts of St. Francis forbid riding
on horseback. We see the scholar's scorn peeping out in
the passage where the old hypocrite shows how a little
learning may be made to go a long way. x\n appearance
of learning is necessary, yet the thorny paths of
Aristotle's rules are too painful to tread. Nor is it
necessary to do so. A few sentences of Cicero, a few
lines of Virgil, or half an ode of Horace, used with discre-
tion, will suffice. One genius built a reputation upon
fifteen Latin words. No one need trouble himself about
a barbarism or a chance solecism : it would be shameful
if sacred mysteries must bow the neck to the halter of the
grammarian.

It would have been strange if after so happy a beginning
Buchanan had let his highest powers sleep for ever. He
did not. To prove that he exercised in conversation the
qualities which he could use so well in literature we have
the fact that it was his sarcastic humour on which his
countrymen seized as the salient feature of his character;
and we have a number of minor satires not yet noticed and
three books of epigrams (partly, but certainly not wholly,
composed before this date) to show that he did not lay
aside the satiric pen. But the very force of the earlier
satires was hostile to his subsequent success in that form of
composition. They caused his banishment, and banish-
ment cut him off from those strong and wide social interests
without which work of the kind could scarcely be continued.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 65

For more than twenty years he was a stranger in strange
lands, the centre perhaps of small academic societies, but
scarcely reached by the mightier waves of life. Perhaps,
too, the fact of his writing in Latin helped to conceal from
him where his true powers lay. It seems in his case and
in many others to have induced a habit of attempting
everything, which was often fatal to high excellence.
However this may be, he never again rose so high in
satire, and he showed no disposition to recognise this as
his special province. In one remarkable instance in his
old days he returned to it ; and it is noticeable that on that
occasion he departed from his usual practice in two im-
portant particulars : he used Scotch instead of Latin and
prose instead of verse.

The minor Latin satires contained in the Fratres Frater-
rimi seem to have been composed partly during Buchanan's
exile, partly after his return to Scotland. They are marked
by his characteristic pungency; but the comparative trivi-
ality of the subjects cuts off much of the interest which
attaches to the great satires on the Franciscan order, and
through it the Church. For the most part they simply
traverse again the ground that had been gone over in these.
The cleverest among them, that entitled In Antotiiuvi
Tomartum Abbafe??i, is a wonderful display of wit. It is a
series of antitheses between the life of Christ and the life
of the Abbot. They are almost the same, yet wide as the
poles asunder. In this piece we have a taste of the
qualities which mark the epigrams. It might have been
predicted that Buchanan would succeed in this species of
composition ; for he had the penetrating wit and, when he
chose, the nervous, concise style necessary to it. His

66 SCO TTISH LITERA TURK.

epigrams were highly esteemed in the author's own day,

and long after it; and he was considered, not unjustly, one

of the few masters of the art — a high compliment in view of

the number who have attempted it and failed. Perhaps

the best known among his epigrams is one said to be

borrowed from an obscure Latin writer : —

Frustra ego te laudo, frustra me, Zoile, laedis :
Nemo mihi credit, Zoile, nemo tibi.

During the long exile thus occasioned Buchanan's career
was a chequered one. He seems to have gone first to
Paris ; but the presence there of Cardinal Beaton caused
him to flee farther. Before he again returned to Scotland
he taught successively at Bordeaux, Paris, and Coimbra,
and was tutor to the son of the Comte de Brissac. From
1539 to 1542 or 1543 he worked in the College de Guyenne
under the principalship of his old colleague at Ste. Barbe,
Andre de Gouvea. For the next few years all that is
known of his life is that for some time he taught in the
Colle'ge du Cardinal Lemoine. In 1547 he proceeded to
Portugal with Gouve'a, who had been summoned thither
by the king, John III., to superintend the College of Arts
of the University of Coimbra. There Buchanan spent five
troubled years. The perilous fame of the satires followed
him. Gouve'a died within the first year, his college passed
under the dominion of the Jesuits, and Buchanan was
harassed with charges of heresy and vague offences against
the Church. In the end he was confined for four months
in a monastery — to be taught by the monks. There he
began his paraphrase of the Psalms, which, however, was
not finished till some years later, and not published till
after his return to Scotland.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 67

Buchanan shook from his feet the dust of Portugal in
1552. The Cretan ship in which he had taken passage
landed him in England ; but, after what must have been
a very brief stay, he returned once more to Paris. There
he lived for about two years. In 1555 he was engaged by
the Comte de Brissac as tutor to his son, Timoleon du
Cossd. He held this office for five years, moving about
from France to Italy as the military duties of the Marshal
demanded. During this period he tells us that he gave
most of his time to the study of theology, in order that he
might be able to form opinions on the questions which then
filled the minds of men. He returned to Scotland at a date
not exactly ascertained, but certainly not later than the
beginning of 1562.

In the course of those two-and-twenty years Buchanan
had laid a broad foundation for his scholarly fame. Most
of his poetry belongs to this period. The four tragedies
were written at Bordeaux — the translations into Latin of
the Medea and Alcestis of Euripides, and the Jephthes
and Baptistes, original compositions. It is impossible to
say much in praise of them as tragedies : though he is
in some respects happy in the Jephthes, Buchanan appears
to have been deficient in dramatic power; and he com-
posed his dramas mainly as exercises for the benefit of
the students of his college. They contain however abund-
ance of vigorous argument and not a little of graceful
fancy. The style is clear and strong, but betrays too
great a fondness for antithesis. The choice of subject
in the case of the Baptisies is notable. In the bold
and manly dedication to James VI., written long after
the play itself, the author proclaims his wish that the

68 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

King may learn from it the fate of tyrants ; and beyond
doubt the desire to lielp the cause of liberty was one
of Buchanan's motives in writing it.

To the period of the exile belong also the greater
part of the elegies and of the miscellaneous collection
entitled Silvae, many of the epigrams, and other oc-
casional verses. These are written in a style whose
most striking quality is force, but which is also at times
singularly graceful and beautiful. They are less original
than the satires, and there is a greater proportion of in-
ferior work. Yet after all deductions have been made
there remain a number of poems of genuine beauty.
The first of the elegies, which describes the author's
miseries as a teacher at Paris, has the ring of true feeling.
The piece which follows it, Maiae Calendae is also fine,
but is surpassed by another set of verses among the
Miscellanies on the same subject. It is one of the
most exquisite tributes in poetry to the poets' favourite
season. The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the
Dauphin offered a tempting subject to Buchanan's muse ;
and he did not neglect it. The Epithalamium is among
the finest of his poems ; but its merit is not of the kind
characteristic of that species of composition. It is not
until we come to the noble apostrophe describing the
dowry Mary brought with her that the poet seems to
put forth his full powers. Then his Scottish patriotism
bursts forth with an energy which commands admiration,
even though the colours in which he paints the wealth
of his country may excite a smile. Not until Burns's
Vision and Scott's Lay was Scotland again sung with
such fervour. It is only the language in which Buchanan

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 69

writes that has prevented his lines from being as well
known as theirs. Even as it is the following passage
is one of the very {t\v in his poetry that is not quite
forgotten. It exhibits a man who was at once a patriot
and a poet : —

" Ilia pharetratis est propria gloria Scotis,
Cingere venatu saltus, superare natando
Flumina, ferre famem, contemnere frigora et aestus ;
Nee fossa et muris patriam, sed Marte, tueri,
Et spreta incolumem vita defendere famam ;
Polliciti servare fidem, sanctumque vereri
Numen amicitiae, mores, non munus amare.
Artibus his, totiim fremerent cum bella per orbem,
Nullaque non leges tellus mutaret avitas
Externo subjecta jugo, gens una vetustis
Sedibus antiqua sub libertate resedit.
Substitit hie Gothi furor, hie gravis impetus haesit
Saxonis, hie Cimber superato Saxone, et acri
Perdomito Neuster Cimbro. Si volvere priscos
Non piget annales, hie et victoria fixit
Praecipitem Romana gradum ; quern non gravis Auster
Reppulit, incultis non squalens Parthia campis,
Non aestu Meroe, non frigore Rhenus et Albis
Tardavit, Latium reniorata est Scotia cursum."

It is melancholy to reflect that a mind such as Buchanan's
wasted itself upon the long astronomical poem De Sphaera.
The author himself considered this the greatest of his
poems. It was begun at the time when he was in the
household of de Brissac, but never finished. Copernicus
had already promulgated his system ; but Buchanan, like
the great majority of his contemporaries, held by the
older Ptolemaic system. The sole value of the poem lies
in passages in which the author digresses from his subject
and writes with his characteristic force and weight on
themes less foreign to modem interest.

70 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

But by far the most famous of the works of his exile
was the paraphrase of the Psahns. It is, indeed, that on
which his reputation, among those who have not read
him, chiefly rests to the present day. We may take the very
general agreement among scholars at that time and since
as a proof of its eminent merits compared with rival
versions. But the task Buchanan had set himself was
long ; and although it is certain, notwithstanding Hallam's
judgment to the contrary, that he spent much time over
it and laboriously revised many of his versions, there are
here and there evidences that he flagged at the work.
His great defect is that he loses the characteristic beauty
of the original, its terse strength and directness. Gener-
ally the paraphrase is greatly expanded, and the process
of expansion is weakening. But it is in the freer render-
ings that he is best. His mind was steeped far more
deeply in the classical than in the Hebraic spirit, and,
as a rule, there is most poetry in the paraphrase where
there is least of the singer of Israel. It is seldom that
Buchanan fails to use his classical learning with discre-
tion ; though at least one glaring instance could be
quoted, where he borrows the words of his favourite
Horace, but hopelessly loses the curiosa felicitas. On the
whole, the great version of the Psalms, laboriously written in
twenty-nine metres, received with acclamation by the scholars
of the day, and since traditional for its excellence, must be
pronounced a comparative failure. There is nothing in it
to raise its author conspicuously above contemporary Latin
versifiers. Unless a little genuine poetry embodied in a
great mass of skilful versification is sufiicient foundation
for a reputation, Buchanan's has no sure basis here.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 7 1

Buchanan's return to Scotland brought him once more
into contact with a national life, and its influence is
reflected almost immediately in his works. There is more
of reality, a larger share of the soul and spirit of a man
in them, than the works of the exile possess. Nothing
could demonstrate better the weight which is given by a
multitude to a man's works. Scotchmen have always
entertained a strong prejudice against the ' landlouper,'
and the history of their numerous countrymen who were
driven abroad to indulge their taste for letters, proves
that there is ground for the prejudice. Clever enough,
many of them, to rise to high positions in foreign seats
of learning, and discharging their duties there for the
most part competently, sometimes with high distinction,
it was nevertheless only those who did some part of their
work in their own country who produced any permanent
effect. Had Knox remained all his life a pastor at
Geneva, he would probably have distinguished himself as
a disciple of Calvin, but he would have been of second-
rate importance ; Buchanan, but for his work in Scotland,
would have ranked as a dilettante Latinist ; and Andrew
Melville might have been named with Henry Scrimger.

After Buchanan's return we lose the guidance of the
autobiography ; but as his life was now of a more public
character, its main events can be easily traced. He
hastened to profess the reformed faith, now the religion
of the country. He had not till this time formally dis-
owned the Church of Rome; but he had always been
alive to its abuses ; and his theological studies in the
years when he was with de Brissac had deepened his
sympathy with the doctrines of the Reformers. From

7 2 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

this time forth he took a prominent position in the Kirk.
Notwithstanding this, he acted for a while as Mary's tutor
in Latin, and seems at first not only to have entertained
a high respect for her, but to have won her regard. He
showed his admiration in various poetical tributes, especi-
ally in those beautiful lines in which he dedicated to her
his paraphrase of the Psalms; while she in return
bestowed upon him, first, a pension of 250 pounds Scots,
and afterwards, in 1564, one of double that amount, to be
paid to him from the lands of the Abbey of Crossraguel.
He had much difficulty however in securing payment.
But Buchanan never identified himself with the Queen's
party. In the very year in which he received this grant,
he dedicated his Franciscanus to the Earl of Murray;
and two years later, through Murray's influence, he was
appointed Principal of St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews.
This appointment removed him from Edinburgh during
some of the most eventful years of Scottish history.

But the calm of St. Andrews was of short duration, and
after it ended the tone of Buchanan's life entirely changed.
Up to that time he had appeared as a scholar and poet :
in his remaining years he was a politician and controversial-
ist. The events which brought about the change marched
rapidly. Mary's marriage with Darnley, the assassination
of Rizzio and the murder of Darnley, the Bothwell episode,
the imprisonment in Lochleven, the escape, the battle of
Langside, and finally the flight into England, succeeded
one another with breathless rapidity. This mighty current
drew all the talent of the country within it. Buchanan's
powers were too commanding to escape notice, and his
temper did not incline him to shrink from playing his part.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 73

He followed in the train of Murray when he appeared with
his colleagues before the commissioners appointed by Eliza-
beth to inquire into the case of Mary. This is a crucial
fact in Buchanan's history. Murray was already recognised
as his patron ; but Mary too had bestowed favours upon
him, and he had written of her in terms of warm admiration.
Yet the charges of insincerity and ingratitude may be dis-
missed. The favours of Mary had been received and the
encomiums written before the murder of Darnley and the
marriage with Bothwell, and these events were sufficiently
important to justify a change of front. At the same time
Buchanan cannot be acquitted of excessive and indecent
virulence in his attacks upon Mary. He was a man of
violent passions, who, having once adopted an opinion,
never hesitated to express it in the strongest terms and
to support it by strong means. In the Defectio, to be
noticed presently, he represented Mary as leading an openly
vicious life during 1566; yet one of his own odes is in
honour of the baptism of her son at the end of that year.
But a blacker charge has been brought against him. The
weightiest evidence adduced against Mary was contained
in the celebrated Casket Letters ; and Buchanan has been
accused of forging them. The question of their authenticity
is one which cannot be discussed here : it is enough to
remark that there is no scrap of evidence against Buchanan ;
and a charge or hypothesis based on the mere belief that
he possessed the necessary intellectual capacity is one which
comes with peculiar grace from those who demand legal
proof of Mary's guilt. Though however the disgrace of the
Casket Letters, if there be disgrace to anyone but Mary,
cannot be thrown upon the character of Buchanan, he did

74 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

play an important part in tlie controversy. It was by him
that the case of the Regent and his party was laid before the
world in the Detectio Mariae Reginae Scotorum, a splendidly
forcible composition, marred by acrimony, by unmeasured
invective, and by disregard of probability in the charges
preferred. Even more interesting than the original Latin
is the Scotch translation published soon after and ascribed
to Buchanan himself. It is strong, terse, and precise.
Buchanan's scholarship directs his taste and regulates his
style without obtruding itself in the offensive way in which
the learning of early writers is apt to be brought to the
front.

As the authorship of this translation is doubtful it would
be unsafe to found upon it any conclusions as to Buchanan's
style in Scotch prose. He has however left one or two
unquestioned specimens, the great resemblance of which to
this is the chief reason for thinking, in spite of difficulties,
that it may have been by him. One of these is an
appeal called forth by the troubles following the death of
the Regent Murray, entitled A7ie Admoniiioiin direct to the
irerv Lord is inantenaris of the Kingis Graces Authoritie.
Of more literary interest is the prose satire, Chamaeleon,
which is directed against William Maitland of Lethington,
the subtlest of all the politicians of the time, a match for
Buchanan himself in keenness of intellect and caustic wit,
and a great man in all but stability of purpose and weight
of character. Chamacieon exhibits to the full the close
reasoning and nervous energy characteristic of the author's
style, and proves his mastery of his native language. The
language is Scotch of the purest type, not the Anglicised
Scotch of Knox ; and it is scarcely possible to suppress a

1

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 75

regret that the man who could write thus in his own tongue
did not more frequently employ it. As a satire, however,
Chamaeleon is only moderately successful. The disguise is
worn too carelessly : it serves only to spare Buchanan the
necessity of naming Lethington in connection with the
astounding series of tergiversations with which he charges
him. There is not sufficient mystery to admit of delicate
innuendo or of those hints which derive their piquancy
from the fact that they are not broad statements. Cha-
maeleon might, with very slight alterations, serve as an in-
dictment against Lethington for his conduct during the
whole course of his public life, and especially towards the
Regent Murray.

After his return from England Buchanan again filled
for a short time his old position at St. Andrews ; but in
1570 he was removed thence to take charge of the edu-
cation of the King, then only four years old. His colleague
in this office was Peter Young. They were men very
unlike in character. Young, according to contemporary
testimony, was an efficient teacher indeed, but shrewd in
his own interest, and careful not to cross a pupil so
powerful ; Buchanan was stern, unbending, heedless of
everything but the way to train the mind and discipline
the character of James. There is still extant an amusing
story of his laying his hand upon " the Lord's anointed "
and replying to courtly remonstrance with grim humour.
He certainly was a strict disciplinarian — perhaps too
strict. More than once in his works he addresses the
King with blunt freedom, and James to the end of his
life remembered him with awe. The result of his train-
ing could not be entirely satisfactory to Buchanan ; but

76 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

it is to be remembered that if he did not succeed in
making James a man he at least made him a scholar.

Meantime Buchanan did not forget the public affairs
in which he had taken part; and in 1579 the result
of his meditations upon them was given to the world
in the shape of a dialogue, De Jure Regni apud Scoios,
written, as he states in the dedication, " ante annos
complures." It is the best of Buchanan's prose works.
From the introductory questions it appears that the
object of the work was to justify to foreign nations
the proceedings of the Scots against Mary. The inter-
locutors are the author and Thomas Maitland. Buchanan
institutes no elaborate investigation into the constitutional
law of Scotland, such as might be expected from the
title ; but taking for his models the dialogues of antiquity
he proceeds on philosophical principles to determine the
relations of king and people. The leading positions
maintained afe that monarchy has its origin in a com-
pact between sovereign and subjects; that to protect
themselves the people impose laws upon the king; and
that if he transgresses those laws he is liable to
punishment.

It would be superfluous at the present day to seek to
prove that the idea of such a contract is a mere fiction :
it is more to the purpose to note the nature of the
doctrines based upon it, and the rights the author
assigns to the king as ruler of the people and to the
people against the king. His idea of monarchy is a
noble one, drawn not from the servile sentiments current
in Europe in his day, but from the philosophy of Greece
and the law of Rome. In his view mere unbridled

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 7?

power is the mark not of a king but of a tyrant, and
royal dignity consists not in tlie exercise of such a power,
but in the abihty and the will to rule for the sake of the
people. As Buchanan beautifully expresses it, kings should
be like the heavenly bodies, which, though we can do
nothing to earn their favours, pour their light and heat
upon us. Recognising such an ideal of kingly excellence
as this, he finds within the bounds of law ample scope
for the exercise of royal powers ; and those bounds must
not be crossed. He is very absolute on the point that
the king exists for the people, not the people for the
king. His zeal leads him so far as to maintain the doc-
trine of killing no murder in the case of tyrants, whom
he speaks of as wolves to be hunted down without
mercy and by every means available. No one is now
concerned to defend such extreme views or to enquire
whether an ordinary judge in an ordinary court has power
to pronounce the doom of his sovereign. Notwith-
standing these defects, the dialogue as a whole is a
wonderful specimen of acute, powerful, and unshrink-
ing reasoning. One whose mind is filled with the history
of England rather than that of Scotland, who remembers
how rapidly the doctrine of divine right grew and spread
there, how tenaciously it kept the ground, and what
firmness and courage and skill were required in the
battle against it — such a one may be disposed to ex-
aggerate the merit of Buchanan. In Scotland opposition
to the sovereign was familiar, and monarchy was at the
moment represented by a boy of thirteen. Yet, after all
allowances have been made, it was no small matter in
that age to see so clearly and to advocate so powerfully

78 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

the rights of the people against the king. The country
recognised the significance of the work. It was answered
and answered again by the friends of royalty, and awoke
a controversy which was louder and more bitter a hun-
dred years after Buchanan's death than when his dialogue
was fresh. For the theatre had widened. Scotland had
been united to England, and divine right and opposition
to divine right had acquired a meaning identical in the
two countries. In the long battle with the Stuarts
Buchanan's doctrines exercised a strong influence. The
English Royalists, conscious of the weight of his arguments,
would gladly have suppressed the work which contained
them. It had been already condemned in Scotland;
and neither in his native country nor afterwards on the
throne of England did James forgive his old tutor.
Finally in 1683 the political writings of Buchanan had
the honour to be burnt at Oxford along with those of
Milton. But the controversy can hardly be said to have
come to an end till Locke in his political pamphlets
finally demolished the case of the Royalists.

The dialogue was regarded by Buchanan in the light
of a mere Trdpepyov. He was not only busy with public
business, as keeper of the Privy Seal and as member
of the commission appointed to inquire into the affairs
of St. Andrews University, but he had besides on hand
by far the most bulky of all his writings, the Latin
History of Scotland. He laboured at it till the close of his
life. James Melville in his diary narrates that when it was
in the press the author's friends urged him to stop the
printing for fear of the King's anger. Buchanan simply
asked his advisers whether what he had written was true,

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 79

and on their replying that they believed it was, " Then,"
said he, "I will abide his feud and all his kin's." His
death, 28th Sept. 1582, occurred so soon after the publica-
tion that there was little time to proceed against him.

The History was the work upon which Buchanan him-
self set most store ; but the judgment of time has not
confirmed his preference. It is not to a very great
extent an original authority, and its merits as a piece
of composition are not in themselves sufficient to recom-
mend it. For the early period it is clear that Buchanan
made no attempt at an exhaustive study of documents,
and he betrays a credulity which is surprising in so keen
a mind. The blemishes in that part of the History
which deals with the writer's own time are equally con-
spicuous and more important. He is too evidently
a partisan ; and as an authority he is largely super-
seded by Knox, who, though a partisan also, had a
deeper personal knowledge of affairs and wrote more
earnestly. In its own day however the History was
an important work. It appealed to and was read by
the scholars of the Continent ; and thus the main
facts of Scottish history became widely known, and in
particular the meaning and justification of the recent
proceedings against the Queen percolated through yet
another channel into the mind of Europe.

In the Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill there
is a sketch of Buchanan which may be quoted as the
most interesting contemporary picture of him : — " Mester
George was a stoik philosopher, and loked not far before
the hand; a man of notable qualities for his learning
and knawledge in Latin poesie, mekle maid accompt of

8o SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

in other contrees, plaisant in company, rehersing at all
occasions moralities schort and fecfull, wherof he had
aboundance, and invented wher he wanted. He was
also of gud religion for a poet, hot he was easely abused,
and sa facill that he wes led with any company that he
hanted for the tyme, quhilk maid him factious in his
auld dayes ; for he spak and wret as they that wer
about him for the tym infourmed him. For he was be-
com sleperie and cairles, and followed in many thingis
the vulgair oppinion, for he was naturally populaire,
and extrem vengeable against any man that had offendit
him, quhilk was his gretest fait." ^

The weaknesses here spoken of are not all such as
we should be inclined to ascribe to Buchanan ; but the
portrait was drawn when, as Melville intimates, age and
infirmity had unstrung his mind and soured his temper ;
and it should be noticed that the worst charges against
Buchanan are unsupported by a politician who was
certainly not inclined to take an unduly favourable view
of his public career. In truth those charges run
counter to everything we know of the character of the
man. He may be safely acquitted of all the blacker
vices. His faults were those which spring from a hot,
impulsive, uncontrolled temper. The evidence upon
which Buchanan's personal character is impugned is
almost entirely a priori. With reference to his public
life we need something more than the conjecture that
he might have forged the Casket Letters ; and for his
private life it is not enough to point to some gross
lines in poems written in an age when all were gross.
' Maitland Club ed., p. 262.

GEORGE BUCHANAN. 8 1

The impression he leaves as a man is that of one
with a full allowance of human weaknesses, but free
from and superior to all meanness. Among scholars he
is eminent for the freedom and flexibility of his mind.
Most pure scholars, not in Buchanan's day alone but in all
ages, have acquired something of the musty flavour of
the books among which their lives were passed. Buchanan,
with a few others, was saved by native greatness of mind
from this misfortune. His pages are almost always fresh,
conspicuously so when the subject is such as to bring
his mind into direct contact with the great movement of
his age. The pulse of human passion and human
sympathy still beats through his works. The most
astonishing feature about hmi, that which stamps him
as unmistakably great, is that though one of the most
distinguished of the most artificial class of men of letters
the world has ever seen, he is not himself artificial. It is
this too which causes the keenest pang of regret when
we consider the language he chose for his writings, and
how hopelessly, notwithstanding the splendour of his
gifts, this cuts him off from his due share of influence
on the national literature. Lindsay, a pygmy by com-
parison, is now a more conspicuous figure than he. And
the regret iS all the deeper because it is certain, from the
few vernacular writings he has left, that Buchanan was a
master of his native Scotch as well as of Latin. No
writer of prose among his contemporaries or predecessors
equals him ; not Knox himself, fascinating as his History
of the Reformation is. Buchanan is part of the sacrifice
which the Renaissance demanded. The scholarship which
it fostered, so fruitful in many respects, so profound in

82 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

its influence upon our modern civilisation, produced at
one point a false idea as to the claims and capabilities
of the " vulgar tongues " and of the common life. To
this Buchanan fell a victim ; and through this his rich
endowments of mind and heart were half lost to his
country.

CHAPTER III.

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION.

JOHN KNOX.

An attempt has been made in the previous chapters to show-
that hterature, as represented by Lindsay and Buchanan,
performed important services to the cause of reformation in
reHgion. It is desirable to learn something of the nature
of the reformation v^^hich they furthered ; and to show how,
in the works of its greatest advocate, it requited the help
lent by literature. For though, unfortunately, the influence
of the Scottish Reformation was in the end deeply
prejudicial to art in all forms, its great leader, Knox, was
not only the reformer of a kingdom, but the author of one
of the most memorable books that kingdom has ever given
to the world, a book which ought to take a high place even
in the rich literature which the sixteenth century added to
the English tongue.

John Knox was born at Gifford Gate, Haddington, in
1505. He received all the education his country could
give him, first at the grammar school of Haddington, and
afterwards at Glasgow University; but he did not obtain
that last and highest polish from a Continental seat of
learning which was needed for the making of a scholar, and
in after years he was forced painfully to make good the

84 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

defect. That he to a certain extent did so in the midst of
all the distractions of a busy and active life is one of the
proofs of that thoroughness which stands out among his
most prominent qualities. At Glasgow, whither he went
in 1522, Kno.x came under the influence of Major, from
whom he learnt the philosophy of the time, and also
imbibed certain ideas calculated to raise doubts as to the
absolute wisdom of the established order of things. He
never took his degree ; and the statement that after leaving
Glasgow he taught as regent at St. Andrews is very question-
able. As yet Knox had no quarrel with the Romish Church.
He became one of the "Pope's Knights" "before he
reached the age fixed by the canons of the Church," ^ says
M'Cne— a statement which requires a good deal of proof.
If it is correct he must have been ordained before 1530.
The new opinions were spreading ; the teaching of Major
was doubtless fermenting in Knox's own mind ; and the
twelve obscure years which followed his admission into the
Catholic Church must have been years of doubt and
mental conflict. It was characteristic of the man that he
would not accept his faith at second hand. The study of
the early fathers disposed him to lay unusual stress on the
Scriptures, and it was only after he believed that he had
found in the Bible a warrant for the doctrines of the Refor-
mers that he joined the party which professed those doc-
trines. Some time later, in 1 544, he fell under the influence of
Wishart, and played a dramatic part in attendance upon him
immediately before his arrest. He carried the two-handed
sword which was usually borne before Wishart.

The story of Wishart is in outline at least well known.
' Life, I. 12, fifth edition.

JOHN KNOX. 85

After he had been for a considerable time the leading
spirit in a movement which, though it could not yet be
called widely popular, ^ was surely gaining ground, the
Church thought it necessary to silence him. He was
seized, carried to St. Andrews, tried, and burned to death
on the 2nd March, 1546. Before two months were over
Cardinal Beaton himself, the leader in these proceedings,
for years the chief of Scottish Churchmen, and in his last
days the most powerful person in the land, fell by the hand
of assassins in his own castle of St. Andrews. There is
no doubt as to the name of the act by which he fell. It
was an assassination boldly and skilfully, but also merci-
lessly carried out. But its moral character has been very
variously represented. There has been a tendency among
enthusiasts for the Reformation to gloss it over and look
upon the murderers as instruments of divine vengeance.
Catholic writers, on the other hand, have exhausted their
vocabulary in condemnation of it ; and even the later
Presbyterians have seen that some concession must be
made to this view. The violence which is murder and
therefore sin in opponents, does not become sacrifice and
therefore virtue in the sight of Heaven when practised
by associates. The most that can be urged for the act is
that it partook of the nature of tyrannicide, and has what-
ever justification can be pleaded for deeds of that kind.
But a further question arises as to the motives of the
assassins. They have been regarded by most Scotchmen
as men who, if they erred, erred from a pure enthusiasm

^ Knox's account of Wishart's visit to Haddington helps to prove this.
There was no stirring of the people, and no adequate explanation of
their quietness can be offered except that they did not much care.

86 SCOTTJSH LITERATURE.

for the truth. There is however proof that they were not
all single-minded. Some were in the pay of England ; and
the murder was a stroke dealt with the knowledge and con-
nivance of the English authorities, quite as much on poli-
tical as on religious grounds. Worst of all, the name of
Wishart is sullied with the odium of these transactions with
Henry VIII. A person called Wishart was the bearer of
the letter to Henry containing the proposition of Norman
Lesley and the others. It may have been another Wishart,
but no other Wishart is known who was at that time stirring
in political or religious matters. It is true that the story
is inconsistent with all our ideas of Wishart and with all
contemporary pictures of him ; but stains of this sort are all
too common on religious zealots, and it would be unsafe
to say even of the gentlest and best of them that in all
circumstances they would be incapable of joining in such
intrigues.

It was after the martyrdom of Wishart and the murder of
Beaton that Knox began to rise into prominence. He
had no part in the murder ; but there cannot be a doubt
in any unprejudiced mind that he approved of it. This
is denied by those followers of little faith who dare not
believe that Knox can afford to have his character painted
truthfully, like Cromwell's face, with all its furrows and
wrinkles ; but the more masculine among his panegyrists
admit it, and the fact is plain from the narrative as it stands
in Knox's History of the Reformation. Apart altogether
from the famous marginal note, " the godly fact and woordis
of James Melven," the whole tone is one of commendation ;
and at the end, after mentioning the " salting," etc., he
adds, " these things we write mearelie," a phrase which

JOHN KNOX. S7

always indicates that Knox takes pleasure in the story he
is telling. After the assassination he joined the party of
the conspirators in the Castle of St. Andrews, endured the
siege with them, and with them passed, on the surrender
in Jul}', 1547, into the French galleys. During the siege
there occurred one of the most interesting, and in his own
estimation one of the most important events in Knox's life,
his public call to preach the Gospel. It came from the
mouth of John Rough, preacher to the garrison, who in
the name of God and the listening congregation summoned
him to " take the public office and charge of preaching."
Knox was overcome, burst into tears, rushed out, and shut
himself up for solitary thought. But though the feeling of
responsibility was unaffected, the office was too congenial
to be declined. Knox was from that day a preacher, and
soon the most powerful and effective preacher in Scotland.
He himself with pardonable satisfaction quotes the com-
ments on his first sermon : " Some said, ' Otheris sned the
branches of the Papistrie, but he stryckis at the roote, to
destroye the hole.'" ^

From the time of the surrender of St. Andrews to
February, 1549, Knox was a prisoner in the galleys. On
obtaining release (through what means is unknown) he re-
turned to England, and was soon installed as preacher at
Berwick, where he made the acquaintance of Marjory Bowes,
who afterwards became his wife. About two years later he
was removed to Newcastle. It is evident that during his
ministry in the north of England he proved to many an un-
comfortable neighbour. To please Tunstall and the clergy
he was called before the Council of the North (no unfriendly
^ History, Wodrow ed., I. 192.

f^ SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

audience) to defend his doctrine that the mass is idola-
trous ; and he started to do it with an unimpeachable syllo-
gism in Barbara. The Duke of Northumberland too, for
reasons of his own, desired the removal of the uncom-
promising preacher. Perhaps Knox's habit of handling
public questions freely in the pulpit had more to do with
this desire than the reasons assigned for it, namely, his per-
sistent neglect of Edward VI.'s first Prayer- Book, and the
congregation of Scots whom he drew to Newcastle to hear
him. It is easy to understand that the man who publicly
bewailed the fall of Somerset must have been far from ac-
ceptable to Northumberland. But in spite of his conflicts
with authority, through one of which he was called before the
Privy Council, the government of Edward remained well
disposed to Knox. He had been early made one of the
royal chaplains, and he was offered more than one prefer-
ment in the Church, the most important being the bishopric
of Rochester ; but such offers he steadily declined because
he was not sufficiently in accord with the English Church
. to accept a permanent charge in it. Still, Knox's sojourn
in England might have lasted long had not the death of
Edward changed everything. After a brief interval of toler-
ance he found himself, early in 1554, obliged to leave the
country and the wife whom he had recently married. Dur-
ing his stay in England Knox had contrived to exercise
considerable influence, not only over the congregations
which came directly into contact with him, but also, in
various points of ritual, etc., on the Church at large. Yet
at almost fifty years of age he remained a man decidedly of
the second rank, and not high in that.

Knox fled to Dieppe, and thence addressed to the

JOHN KNOX. 89

faithful in England a letter remarkable for its deeply
earnest, lofty, and inspiring tone. After some wanderings
he fixed upon Geneva as his place of exile, and there
began that friendship with Calvin which lasted till death.
There too Knox set himself to fill up the gaps in his
education. But the man of action was restless and
unsettled, journeying to and fro to Dieppe for news
of his country, and returning more ill at ease than
ever; for the prospects of the Protestants in Scotland
and England were black enough. It was while he
was in this unsettled state that he wrote the Admoni-
tion to the Professors of God's Truth in Engiafid,
one of the most violent compositions he ever penned.
It was dashed off in a white heat of zeal for the truth
and rage against the persecutors. But the zeal and the
rage outran prudence. Mary might be all he called her,
but it was unwise to denounce a woman who held the
destinies of England in the hollow of her hand as " false,
dissembling, inconstant, proud, and a breaker of promyses,
excepte suche promyses as she made to your God the
Pope." Small wonder that the English Protestants referred
part of their subsequent sufferings to this " outragious
pamphlet of Knox's " ; ^ but it is certain that they ex-
aggerated its effects in suggesting that it was the cause
of the Smithfield burnings.

This pamphlet speedily brought trouble upon the head
of its author. The persecutions in England had driven
the Protestants abroad in such numbers that those
settled at Frankfort proposed and obtained leave to form

^ So called in the letter of the English Congregation at Frankfort
to Calvin.

90 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

themselves into a separate congregation. Knox was called
to be one of their pastors, and somewhat unwillingly he left
his studies at Geneva to accept the charge. There were
difficulties from the first as to the use of the Prayer-
Book ; but a compromise was made, and matters might
have gone smoothly but for the unreasonable violence
of some newcomers, who insisted upon its unqualified
acceptance. Knox then spoke out his mind. His
opponents resented his words, and went so far as to
prefer a charge of high treason against him to the mag-
istrates of the city. The charge was based on words in
the Admo7iitio7i directed against the Emperor and Queen
Mary. The magistrates dared not disregard it, for
there was in Knox's language more than enough to offend
the delicate susceptibilities of a court; and they did the
best they could for him in advising him to leave the
city quietly.

After a short stay at Geneva, Knox set out in the
autumn of 1555 for Scotland. In his History'^ he names
himself among those who were driven by Mary's persecu-
tions to Scotland; but it was only indirectly that affairs
in England influenced his movement thither. The visit
lasted only a few months. Arriving " in the end of the
harvest," he left in July of the following year at the call
of the English congregation of Geneva. But though
short, this sojourn in Scotland was not unimportant.
Knox's influence was at once thrown into the scale of
the more advanced Reformers. He made a vigorous on-
slaught on all such as attempted to satisfy their conscience
and consult their safety at the same time ; thundered out

1 1. 245.

JOHN KNOX. 91

his old denunciations of the mass as idolatry ; and in
an interesting discussion on that subject encountered for
the first time and vanquished the keenest intellect then
in Scotland, William Maitland of Lethington. The
argument on which the temporisers mainly relied was
that Paul at the command of James and the elders passed
to the Temple to pay his vows. Knox's answer is
characteristic. He argues, first, that the facts are unlike :
to pay vows was never idolatry, the mass is. But
secondly, " I greatly doubt whitther eyther James's com-
mandiment or Paule's obedience proceaded from the
Holy Ghost." Knox has been often accused, and accused
with some truth, of arrogance ; but probably he never
said anything, from his own point of view, more arro-
gant than this. What would the Reformer, whose ultimate
appeal was constantly to Scripture, have said of an
opponent who ventured to cast doubt upon an instance
drawn by him from that source ? The conclusion of the
discussion deserves to be quoted. " I see perfytlye," says
Maitland as reported by Knox, " that our schiftis will
serve nothing befoir God, seeing that they stand us in so
small stead befoir man." ^ As Mr. Skelton remarks,- it
would be interesting to hear what Lethington for his
part had to say. But Knox's veracity is above doubt,
and words reported on his own direct authority may be
taken to have been actually spoken. It is possible, even
probable, that he unintentionally gave to discussions of
this kind a colour too favourable to himself; but he was
too proud, too great, and too confident in the righteous-
ness of his cause — in his own infallibility his detractors
^ I. 248. "^ Maiiland of Leihington, I. 209.

92 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

would say — to misrepresent deliberately. At the same
time, it is difficult to believe that the subtle-minded
Lethington was so easily disposed of. Probably the words
meant to him something other than they meant to Knox —
acquiescence, not conviction. And this is perhaps the
secret of Lethington's constant defeats. He did not dare,
or did not choose, to push home all the arguments he
was master of. The charges of atheism which were
brought against him may have been untrue — probably
he did not concern himself much with the question of the
existence of God ; but it is clear that his religion lay on
the surface. When, therefore, we see the astute and
supple courtier and diplomatist silenced by an appeal to
the dealings of the Lord with some old Jewish prince or
patriarch, we look deeper for an explanation. Lethington
may be supposed to have been as well aware as any of
Knox's later critics that the argument from a far distant
age and a dead civilisation to the present is deeply
V fallacious ; but in that age and place it would not have
been prudent to say so ; and therefore the politician held
his tongue.

The result of Knox's work at this time may be summed
up in a few words. He inspired the professors of the new
faith with fresh hope and confidence, made compromise
difficult, and drew the Protestants together on terms of
mutual confidence and a common understanding. The
priests, naturally disturbed, summoned him to Edinburgh,
but themselves found it convenient or prudent to discover
a flaw in the summons. It was not till after Knox had left
Scotland that a fresh summons was issued, sentence passed,
and his effigy burnt. To wrestle with an antagonist was the

JOHN KNOX. 93

breath of Knox's nostrils ; and in the vehemence of the
Appellation with which he met this sentence we may trace
not only a sense of the injustice of the procedure, but of
more intimate personal wrong in being defrauded of the fight.
On his return to Geneva, Knox for some time led a life
of quiet study and pastoral work as minister of the English
congregation ; but his eye was constantly on Scotland, and
he already regarded himself, and was regarded by others,
as a father of the Church there. Many doubtful ques-
tions of doctrine and life were referred to him, and his
answers show a caution, prudence, and regard for the
practicable which must surprise those who forget that he
was at heart a statesman as well as a reformer. Once pass
the line which he conceived to divide God's truth from
devilish error, and he planted his foot like a rock and set
his face like a flint; but on this side of that line he could
and did give and take like a man of the world. This
correspondence between Knox and the perplexed pious
souls of his native country shows that he never dropped
his connexion with Scotland. Accordingly, when, in 1557,
a letter came from the lords of the reformed faith giving a
glowing account of the condition and prospects of their
party in Scotland, and inviting him to come to them, he
readily assented. At Dieppe however he received news
of a very different complexion. After waiting some time
for more favourable letters, Knox, disappointed and piqued,
returned to Geneva. He afterwards blamed himself for
irresolution on this occasion, and acknowledged that the
discouraging letters, coming as they did from individuals
and not from the body as a whole which had invited him,
were only a partial excuse.

94 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

In the last period of his residence at Geneva he was
engaged in various literary undertakings. He assisted in
that version of the Bible known as the Geneva Bible ; he
published several writings of his own ; and, above all, he
blew the famous First Blast of the Trumpet against the
Monstruous Regiment of Women — the only one of his
publications which did not bear his name ; and even
it contains a promise that the name shall be revealed.
The point is a small one, but it shows a trait of the
man's character. There was nothing he ever did that
he feared or hesitated to avow. Knox took a final
leave of Geneva in January, 1559. He had been again
invited by the Protestant nobles, and this time they were
thoroughly in earnest. He was annoyed, however, by the
refusal of the English Government to permit his passage by
land. He sailed direct to Leith, and landed there on the
2nd of May. Political tempest marks his arrival, and those
who look upon him as the stormy petrel of religion impute
it directly to his influence. They are partly right ; for
without Knox the strife might have been less violent, and
would certainly have had a different result. But his coming
coincides with a moral equinox. The powers of light and
darkness, as both sides would have agreed in calling them,
were drawing to an equality, and conflict was inevitable.
Whatever view we take of the character of Mary of Guise,
we can understand the distrust with which the Protestants
regarded her. The martyrdom of Walter Mill showed how
the clerical tide was setting. It roused the Protestants, and
they were too formidable to be a,ny longer either calmly
ignored or silently crushed by the hand of power. Selfish
greed was enlisted on their side as well as disinterested

JOHN KNOX. 95

zeal ; for the possessions of the Church were so many argu-
ments to the needy nobles to join the party which taught
that those possessions did not belong to the Church at all.
Motives more purely political were woven in with these.
The history of Scotland is a story of continuous struggle
against foreign domination. It had been necessary for
centuries to play off France against England \ but now
the "auld friend" threatened to become more dangerous
than the "auld enemy." The height to which French
hopes rose under Mary of Guise is almost incredible. The
Frenchmen in Scotland began " to devyde the landis and
lordschippis according to thair awin fantaseis ; for ane was
styleit Monsieur de Ergyle ; ane uther, Monsieur le Priour ;
the thrid, Monsieur de Ruthven." ^ This division between
the French party and the English party blended with the
division between Protestant and Catholic ; but it also ex-
tended and deepened that division by adding to it the
lukewarm Gallios, careless of religion but absorbed in
politics.

When Knox arrived the struggle had already begun.
The leading preachers were under summons to appear for
trial on the loth of the month, and the result of the pro-
ceedings was a sentence of outlawry unfairly obtained
against them. Knox too was outlawed under the sentence
passed against him in his absence after his former visit;
but, undismayed, he uttered those exhortations which led to
the sacking of the Perth monasteries on the nth. Though
this tumult brought the country to the verge of civil war,
the quarrel was settled before it came to that extremity.
Shortly after, at Cupar Moor, hostile forces confronted each

1 Knox, I. 397.

96 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

other, but doubt and fear on both sides prevented a battle.
The Congregation however, as the Protestant party called
themselves, showed how much in earnest they were and
how formidable were the forces they wielded by seizing
Perth, Stirling, and finally Edinburgh. They held the
capital long enough to set up the Protestant worship ;
and Knox was chosen minister of St. Giles ; but when his
friends were obliged to retire from the city, though they
stipulated that the form of worship now adopted should be
left undisturbed, it was judged prudent that Knox should
withdraw and the less objectionable Willock take his place.
Instead of immediately settling in any one town, he spent
some time in journeying through Scotland, preaching in all
the principal towns, and firing the people v.'ith his own
enthusiasm. There can be no doubt that in this way his
influence was greater than it could possibly have been
had he remained in Edinburgh.

But Knox's work in those days was as much political as
ministerial. It was rapidly becoming clear that the appeal
to arms was inevitable — or rather that the arms already
taken up must be used in more deadly earnest. The
power of the government and the Catholic party was bol-
stered up by French troops ; and the Lords of the Congre-
gation turned to England for help. Nothing more strikingly
shows the ascendency which Knox had acquired than the
fact that, unpalatable as he was to the English Court, it
was through him that negotiations were conducted, and
that Elizabeth for political reasons was forced to treat
with him. It was in the course of these negotiations that
he, apparently for the first and only time, suggested a
crooked course of policy : that England, to avoid a breach

JOHN KNOX. 97

with France, should connive at English volunteers joining
the Protestant party, and even denounce them afterwards
as rebels. With difficulty Elizabeth was induced to grant
help ; but she dealt it out with a niggardly hand, and the
cause of the Congregation did not advance. The war had
resolved itself into a siege, the siege of Leith ; and the
Scots were sorely handicapped by their want of skill
while contending against enemies accustomed to Con-
tinental modes of attack and defence. They were repulsed
and forced to retreat to Stirling.

The image of the trumpet, applied by Knox to the
famous Blast, is appropriate to his whole style of oratory ;
and the trumpet never sounded a clearer and fuller note
in victory than it did now to hearten a defeated and
despairing party. He pointed out the sins which had
brought this judgment upon their heads, laid down the
conditions of future success, and roused them once more
to hope and action. The arrival of an English force kept
the hope alive; and though their troubles were by no
means at an end they were ultimately successful. A treaty
was concluded in July, 1560, under which the French
troops were to leave the kingdom, and the government
was to be vested in a council elected partly by the Estates,
partly by Francis and Mary. For by this time Mary of
Guise was dead. In the previous October a sentence of
suspension had been passed against her in the name of
" the nobility and commons of the Protestants of the
Church of Scotland." She would not readily have forgiven
the insult, and they would never have trusted her ; so that
her death, while the siege of Leith was in progress, removed
one formidable obstacle to an understanding.

98 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Soon after the conclusion of this treaty the Parliament
on the petition of the Protestant barons and gentlemen,
addressed itself to the reformation of religion. A Confession
of Faith hastily drawn up and embodying the Protestant
doctrines was presented, and on August 17th adopted;
and so the principles of the Reformers formally triumphed.
Only three temporal lords voted against the Confession,
and the bishops, as Knox triumphantly remarks, " spaek
nothing." This helplessness of the clergy was a feature of
the whole struggle. With a few vigorous exceptions they
did nothing for their own cause ; their battle was fought by
others ; and this is one proof that the charges of ignorance
and incompetence freely brought against them had a fairly
firm foundation in fact.

The overthrow of Catholicism left the preachers in a
commanding position. Their leader had been the soul
of the political as well as the religious movement which
issued in the Reformation ; they had been consulted on
the most important occasions of state as persons entitled
to a deferential hearing ; they had been thus enabled to
give a remarkably theocratic complexion to the govern-
ment; and it seemed as if for the future each minister
was to hold a duplicate of the keys of St. Peter. One of
the jeers of Lethington shows that already the yoke was
heavy on the neck of the laity: "We mon now forget our
selfifis and beir the barrow to buyld the housses of God." ^

The work which now lay before the Protestants was
constructive — the further definition of their own creed and
the practical establishment of a new ecclesiastical system.
The earliest great contribution to this work was what is

Knox, II. 89.

JOHN KNOX. 99

known as the First Book of Discipline. It was the joint
production of Knox and four other ministers — Winram,
Row, Spottiswood, and Douglas. The weapon they forged
for the new Church was a formidable one. Certain limits
were indeed set to her power. Crimes which the civil sword
can touch were regarded as falling outside the jurisdiction
of the Church. But a general inquisition of manners
and morals may be made an instrument of the severest
tyranny; and in the existing confusion it was maintained
that even the wide limits of ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion might be overstepped and the graver crimes also dealt
with. To this source may be traced those arrogant preten-
sions which for generations the Presbyterian ministers
maintained. The Book of Discipline was however an able
work. It contained in particular a large and liberal scheme
of education, and it would have been well for the country
if the financial proposals embodied in it had been adopted.
Their substance was that out of the patrimony of the old
Church provision should be made not only for the decent
maintenance of the ministry of the reformed faith, but for
education and for the poor as well. But here the ministers
came into conflict with their most powerful supporters, the
Lords of the Congregation, and discovered that they were
not all moved by pure zeal for religion. It was easy to get
the Lords to profess the faith which pleased their reverend
brethren, impossible to unclasp their grip on Church
property.

The arrival of Mary in August, 1561, introduced a new
and important factor into politics. About the years which
follow almost as much has been written as about all the
rest of Scottish history. It is impossible to enter into the

lOO SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

discussion here, and equally impossible to pass it over
without some expression of opinion. The marvellous
ingenuity which has been spent in justifying Mary has
been all in vain. Even if it could be proved that the
Casket Letters were forged (and it seems most probable that
they are genuine), the general course of events is almost
conclusive against her. Only her beauty, sympathy with
her tragic end, and in later times that perverse spirit of
paradox which has found excuses even for Judas, could
have blinded the able men who have undertaken her
defence. But it is significant that the greatest of all
those who from temperament and predilection might have
been expected to champion her, gave up her case as hope-
less. Scott cast aside the thought of writing a life of Mary,
"because my opinion, in point of fact, is contrary both to
the popular feeling and to my own."i 'pj^ig jg not evidence
against her; but the admission of the large, manly, sympa-
thetic mind is more striking than a score of the wire-drawn
arguments in her favour.

It was not long before Mary's presence re-opened the
question of the mass. If the zealots had had their will
neither queen nor subject would have been allowed to hear
it. Knox speaks with no uncertain sound. In preaching
he asserted, " that one Messe (thair war no mo suffered at
first) was more fearful to him than gif ten thousand armed
enemyes war landed in any pairte of the Realme, of pur-
pose to suppresse the hoill religioun " ; ^ and of the more
tolerant he says, "thair war Protestants found that es-
chaimed not at tables and other open places, to ask, ' Why
may not the Queyn have hir awin Messe, and the forme of
' Lockhart, VII. 147. = History, II. 276.

JOHN KNOX. 1 01

hir religioun ? ' " More moderate counsels than his pre-
vailed, and a private celebration of mass was permitted.
No one will now defend such extremes as Knox advocated ;
but, on the other hand, it is folly to import modern prin-
ciples of freedom of conscience into the embittered con-
tests of the sixteenth century ; and there is point in the ques-
tion suggested by M'Crie, What would have become of a
Huguenot Queen set to rule over a Roman Catholic king-
dom ? The Scottish Protestants had still but a slippery
foothold, and though they might wisely have acted with
more liberality, they could not, from sheer necessity of self-
preservation, be perfectly tolerant.

Mary had unlimited confidence in her own powers of
fascination. She determined to win Knox over by the
force of her personal attractions. The Reformer was
sent for, and the result was the first of the famous inter-
views between him and the Queen so often depicted
with pencil and with pen. The sole original authority
for those scenes is Knox himself, and all subsequent
accounts are to be tested by reference to him. Every
one is familiar with the picture of the merciless bigot
brow-beating, insulting, trampling upon the young and
beautiful queen ; but it is grossly unfair to the great
Protestant. The reader must inevitably pity Mary, well-
intentioned, as yet innocent, but set by fate among in-
tractable surroundings and foredoomed to failure. But pity
for Mary ought not to crush out justice to the grander figure
of Knox. He was no boor ; he was simply a man convinced
that he had found the truth and determined not to
palter with it. There was no insult, no wanton insolence.
If his words were bitter, the bitterness was due to his un-

1 02 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

bending integrity. As the messenger of eternal truth
he dared not for his own soul's sake, and for hers, and
for the lasting weal of his country, muffle his tones or
wrap his meaning in the disguise of courtly compliment.
And Mary had this at least to be grateful for, that
her most formidable antagonist freely showed his hand.
Knox's attitude towards the Queen might have been
more conciliatory. He and his brethren claimed the
right to meddle with affairs of State and the domestic
relations of Mary in a way which must have seemed
to her, as it seems to us, intolerable. But there is no
foundation for the more offensive charges of wanton in-
sult and brutality. The beauty and high position and
even the subsequent misfortunes of Mary were powerless
to make evil good, and the soul of Knox's offence con-
sisted in his refusal to disguise his convictions. His
position was hardly less difficult than that of the Queen
herself. Nothing but superlative genius could win sym-
pathy for an old, stern, cankered man in a controversy
with youth and rank and beauty. Knox would have
been more than human or much less than what he was
if he had been able to escape the charge, at the mildest,
of ungraciousness. He must either have been unfaithful
to what he considered the truth, or he must have dis-
played an unexampled power of making the truth palat-
able. Unfaithful he would not and could not be. The
truth in question was not his but God's. It was God, he
fully believed, who spoke through his lips. Charged with
such duties as his, he had no choice but to stand before
the world harsh, unbending, and seemingly though not
really pitiless.

JOHN KNOX. 103

Perhaps the most instructive of all the scenes between the
Reformer and the Queen is that which occurred after his
public remarks, in the year 1563, on the question of her
marriage. The meeting was a stormy one. Knox main-
tained that it was not only his right but his duty to speak as
he had spoken, until Mary burst into angry tears. Then,
standing by, he addressed her : " Madam, in Goddis presence
I speak : I never delyted in the weaping of any of
Goddis creatures ; yea, I can skarslie weill abyd the
tearis of my awin boyes whome my awin hand correctis,
much less can I rejoise in your Majesties weaping. But
seing that I have offered unto you no just occasioun to
be offended, but have spocken the treuth, as my voc-
atioun craves of me, I man sustean (albeit unwillinglie)
your Majesties tearis, rather than I dar hurte my con-
science, or betray my Commonwealth through my
silence."^ It is not to be wondered at that Mary, bred
in the French court, and unable to grasp the limitations
of royal authority in Scotland, failed to understand Knox.
He surprised others besides the Queen. On one occasion,
after the "second commouning," "the said Johne Knox
departed with a reasonable meary countenance ; whairat,
some Papistis offended said, ' He is not effrayed.' Which
heard of him he answered, ' Why should the pleasing
face of a gentill woman efTray me? I have looked in
the faces of manie angrie men, and yitt have nott been
effrayed above measure.' "^

Knox never altered the judgment which he records of
Mary after the " first reasoning " : — " Yf thair be not in hir
a proud mind, a crafty will, and ane indurat hearte against
^History, II. 389. "^History, II. 334.

1 04 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

God and his treuth, my judgment faileth me."^ This,
which he states in the History as the tenor of his conver-
sation at the time, is confirmed by a letter to Cecil, dated
7th Oct., 1561 : "In communication with her, I espyed
such craft as I have not found in such aige." ^ Mary on her
part tried against him in vain threats, expostulation, and even
a charge of treason. Knox cared not for the threats ; and
from the charge of treason he escaped, probably because
the lay lords, however they might disapprove of some parts
of his conduct, knew that to crush him meant to deliver
themselves into the hands of the Catholics. The Queen's
marvellous powers of fascination had a greater, though only
a passing effect. On one notable occasion, after an angry
conversation the previous day, she summoned her antago-
nist, met him all smiles in the hunting field, and sent him
delighted away with a commission to bring about a recon-
ciliation between the Earl of Argyll and his wife.'^ But
though even Knox's armour was penetrable, his policy was
too much opposed to hers to permit of reconciliation. She
would not give up the Catholics : he would not abstain
from denouncing them. The defection, as he considered
it, of the Protestant lords in favour of Mary only increased
his anger and strengthened his determination. He broke
with Murray, and for nearly two years there were three
important parties in the State ; the extreme and moderate
Protestants, headed respectively by Knox and Murray ; and
the Catholics, led by Mary, and watching for an oppor-

' History, II. 286. - Quoted by M'Crie.

'The story is told in the History, II. 373 sqq. Knox there sets it
down avowedly as an example of the Queen's dissimulation ; but he
was evidently pleased in spite of himself.

JOHN KNOX. 105

tunity to profit by the dissensions of their opponents. The
Protestant leaders were not reconciled until, as Knox ex-
presses it, the flame was quenched by the waters of afflic-
tion ; and by that time it was evident that there was no
room in the country for a moderate party. But if Knox
thus for a time lost one important alliance, by his marriage
in March, 1564, to Margaret Stewart, daughter of Lord
Ochiltree, he gained another. His first wife had died
between three and four years previously ; and this second
marriage displeased and even alarmed his enemies ; for the
Stewarts of Ochiltree were related to the royal house ; and
the opponents of Knox did not know how far the ambition
of the Reformer might lead him. Their fears are the source
of the ridiculous stories current at the time that he had used
the black art, which was supposed to be the only means
by which an old man in his position could win a young and
high-born woman.

In the following years Knox's hand is less visible in
public affairs than it had been. There was less for him
to do after the new faith had been formally accepted.
What he could and did do was to keep a vigilant eye on
Mary's intrigues, and to rouse the people by his eloquence
whenever anything prejudicial to religion, as he fancied, was
being done. The freedom with which he spoke his mind
with reference to the Queen's marriage has been already
alluded to. The fruits of the alliance with Darnley were
much what Knox had anticipated ; and the degree to
which he was moved and disturbed may be seen in the
bitter sarcasm of his description of the state of things in
religion in the year 1566.^ The events which followed the

^ History, II. 266.

I06 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

murder of Darnley completely changed the sky of Scottish
politics. The regency of Murray was a short summer of
delight to the Protestants. The preceding troubles had led
to a reconciliation between him and Knox, and the terms in
which the Reformer refers to the Regent's death prove how
well he was satisfied with his government. The image ot
the Lord so shines in Murray that the devil and the people
to whom he is prince cannot abide it.

The career of Knox himself was drawing to a close.
Grief for the loss of friends, disappointment at the over-
clouding of the fair promise for the reformed faith, and
the effects of unremitting toil on a frame never robust,
brought on a stroke of apoplexy in October, 1570. The
report ran among his triumphant enemies that the great
Reformer was dead. They were mistaken : there were still
two years of life before him, and as long as he lived he
laboured against Popery.

Those two years were probably the most painful of
Knox's life. Murray's strong rule had promised to put a
stop to the disorders of Scotland ; but during the regencies
of Lennox and Mar they all revived. The power of the
Queen's party grew. The defection of Kirkcaldy of Grange
was a blow to Knox personally, for he loved the man ;
and besides, it put the castle of Edinburgh in the hands of
his enemies, and made his position as minister of St. Giles
one of great discomfort and some danger. It was deemed
prudent that he should leave the capital ; and accordingly
he retired in May, 157 1, to St. Andrews. His peace there
was disturbed not only by private disputes but by the
setting up of the " tulchan " bishoprics, which he was
powerless to prevent. The hatred of his enemies followed

JOHN KNOX. 107

him in his retreat, and stories were circulated that he
had raised saints by the black art, and that there had
appeared among them the devil with horns. In August,
1572, Knox returned to Edinburgh. As his former col-
league, John Craig, had been removed from St. Giles,
and as Knox was physically incapable of doing the
work, James Lawson was summoned in all haste from
Aberdeen to take the place of Craig. On Sunday, Nov.
9th, Knox performed his last public duty at the installation
of Lawson. The following Tuesday he was " stricken with
a grit hoist," and on the 13th he desired his wife to pay
his servants' fees, saying he would never give them another
fee. On Friday, the 14th, he rose, and, though scarce
able to sit, when asked what he would do, said, " he would
go to the kirk and preich, for he thocht it had bene
Sonday." On Monday, the 17th, the congregation came
at his desire, and he addressed them, and was considerably
the worse for the exertion. On Friday "he commandit
Richard [Bannatyne] to gar make his kist, whairin he was
borne to his buriall." He lingered on till Monday, the
24th, uttering from time to time exclamations which proved
that his mind was constantly running on the scheme of
salvation, even when his attendants imagined him to be
asleep. The end came on the evening of that day, his
last motion being a gesture of assent when exhorted to
remember the promises of Christ.^

The figure of Knox in the world of letters is not at all
proportionate to his intrinsic greatness. He was a man of
deeds, not of words ; and his greatest work consisted in the
influence he exerted in moulding the character and history

^ Bannatyne's Memorials.

1 08 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

of his countrymen. Yet his collected writings (including a
number of letters to friends) fill six large volumes, a great
portion of them the work of the busy years when he was
acting as leader of the Scottish Protestants. All these
writings bear more or less directly on the absorbing
question of religion, for in that question the whole man
Knox was immersed. But they bear upon religion in
various ways. Some are practical exhortations to the
professors of the reformed faith generally, or more par-
ticularly to congregations and sections of the Protestants
with whom Knox had been specially connected. Such for
example are the " admonitions " and " godly letters " which
he from time to time addressed to the faithful. Others
again are controversial writings dealing with points of
speculative theology, as the treatise on Predestination, the
Reasoning with Abbot Kennedy, and the answer to the
Jesuit Tyrie. In yet another class must be placed those
treatises which have a political cast, chief among which are
the Blast, and above all the History of the Reformation in
Scotland.

The writings of the first class are those which have least
literary interest; and yet they were those in which their
author himself felt that he was best fulfilling his destiny.
He early recognised that his vocation was rather to stir
men to action by preaching and by direct personal appeal,
than to convince them by abstract and impersonal argu-
ment ; and the addresses and epistles were committed to
paper simply because distance made direct intercourse
impossible. No one can fail to recognise the earnest-
ness and sincerity which inspire them. To Knox the
pastoral office was one not to be lightly taken up or

JOHN KNOX. 109

laid aside : the congregation to which he had once minis-
tered had, he felt, a claim upon him while life lasted.
In his declining days he longed to return to his former
charge, the quiet congregation of Geneva. This affec-
tionate regard for those among whom he was labouring
or had laboured is one of the most lovable traits of his
character. For those outside the fold of the true faith
he had small charity, but to all within it his heart was
generously open.

The theological works of Knox hold a peculiar posi-
tion— peculiar because they are so inadequate to his
place in the history of the Reformation. There will be
general agreement that after the names of Luther, Calvin,
and perhaps Zuinglius, no name connected with the
rise of Protestantism stands higher than that of Knox.
Yet in an age when theological speculation was rife,
when every person of note and many of no note
attempted it, the Scottish leader made no appreci-
able contribution to doctrine. Doubtless a professed
theologian could point to some shades of opinion which
he would mark off as the special contribution of Knox ;
and he certainly showed great resource in adapting the
ecclesiastical polity of Calvin to new conditions and
surroundings. But the fact remains that no world-
stirring doctrine, nothing that any spirit higher than the
bigotry of sects would fight for, belongs especially to
Knox. He was not at all an original theologian; he
was a theological polemic of rare force and acuteness
and of respectable though not of the widest learning.
It is the armoury of Calvin that supplies him with all
his weapons ; he can only claim the credit of wielding

1 1 0 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

them with dexterity and effect. And it is significant
that his most considerable efforts are answers to
opponents ; indeed it was a law of his nature that
he must be always struggling against some adversary,
the universal adversary, the devil, if nothing more con-
crete offered.

The principal, indeed the only full and elaborate theo-
logical work which Knox has left, is the treatise on
Predestination, or, to give its full title. An afis7ver to a
great noniber of blasphettioiis caidllations written by an
Anabaptist, and aduersm-ie of God's eternal Predestination^
and confuted by John Knox, nii?iister of God's word in
Scotland. It was printed at Geneva in 1560, and as the
work of Knox's most vigorous years it may be fairly
taken as the measure of what he could do in the sphere
of theological speculation. The treatise is Calvin over
again, but in a different atmosphere. Calvin knows,
Knox feels ; and some of the weaknesses incidental to
feeling appear in his pages. He is at times too in-
dignant with his adversary to answer his arguments, and
vituperation occasionally takes the place of reasoning.
It is obvious also that some of the arguments which he
uses against the Anabaptist could be turned with crushing
force against himself: for instance, it ill becomes the
school to which Knox belonged, a school always ready
on occasion to show an intimate acquaintance with the
designs of deity, to plead that we cannot comprehend
the ways of God.^ No doubt there is truth in this ;
but it inculcates modesty on all points, not merely when

^ The plea is advanced in answer to the argument that God cannot
have reprobated any, because that would be cruel and unnatural.

JOHN KNOX. 1 1 1

assurance is inconvenient. The doctrine of the book
need hardly be criticised. It teaches predestination in
its hardest form, a doctrine familiar ever afterwards in
Scotland, and one which worked out its own Nemesis two
hundred years later in the shape of Holy Willies Prayer.
Of the writings of Knox which have a political as well
as a religious aspect two stand out prominent — the
celebrated Blast and the History of the Reformatio7i in
Scotland.

The First Blast of the Truvipet against the Monstruous
Regiment of Women has the force which never failed its
author, and a degree of polish which in subsequent
more distracted days he was seldom able to give to his
writings. Its boldness, its dramatic fitness for the time
(or unfitness as it might with equal truth be phrased),
arrested and held the attention of men. It is now by
far the best known of its author's works. Those who
know nothing else about Knox, know him as the blind
fanatic who, just on the eve when truth and righteousness
were about to find shelter beneath the shield of a queen, set
himself to prove that no woman ought ever to be a queen.
The subject had been in Knox's mind ever since the
accession of Mary to the English throne ; he had forti-
fied himself with high authority regarding it ; and
doubtless his fellow-worker and friend, Goodman, whose
thoughts were travelling the same road, stimulated him.
The Blast, therefore, was no immature and hasty work,
but one which, whatever may have been the time
occupied in the actual writing, had been simmering in
its author's mind for some years. It is not for his
learning that Knox has won fame; but still the pile of

1 1 2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

authorities from Scripture and the Fathers, and from pro-
fane sources like Aristotle and the Digest, which he
accumulates to prove his point, demonstrates that he
was far from being contemptible as a student. The
materials were plentiful, and Knox makes them glow
with his own intense conviction and fuses them into one
whole. His opinion of women is of the most con-
temptuous character.^ They are "weake, fraile, im-
pacient, feble, and foolishe"; they are "unconstant,
variable, cruell, and lacking the spirit of counsel and
regiment." He piles epithet upon epithet with a wonder-
ful wealth and strength of diction. As regards govern-
ment, "it is no more possible that she being set aloft in
authoritie above man shall resist the motions of pride,
than it is able to the weake reed, or to the turning
wethercocke, not to bowe or turne at the vehemencie of
the unconstant wind." ^ No wonder that Elizabeth, at
once vain and conscious of strength, found it impossible
to forgive language of this kind. Yet in the Blast itself
Knox had left himself a loophole of escape if he had
been courtier enough to take advantage of it. He had
to acknowledge such cases as those of Deborah and
Huldah as exceptions: "The causes were known to God
alone, why he toke the spirit of wisdome and force
from all men of those ages, and did so mightily assist
wemen against nature, and against his ordinarie course."
But subsequently, when Knox did make some clumsy
efforts to propitiate Elizabeth, he insisted too much on
her case being against nature and against the ordinary

^ His practice however was better than his theory.
2 Works, IV. 381.

JOHN KNOX. 113

course of Providence, and laid too little emphasis on the
spirit of wisdom and force which had been breathed into
her.

This work, more than anything else, has called down
upon Knox's head the condemnation alike of contemporaries
and of subsequent generations. It is unfortunate for his
reputation that the Blast is the best known of his writings,
for it is the least wise. It displays his fiery energy, his
boundless force, his profound earnestness, his rapid elo-
quence; but it shows also how these very qualities when
uncontrolled may degenerate into violence and imprudence.
Knox was by no means habitually imprudent, but from
time to time he took the bit between his teeth and
ran off ungovernable ; and it was seldom that he could
be afterwards brought to see his mistake. It was
unwise to provoke the reigning Queen of England, and
still more unwise to run the risk of alienating one
who stood so near the throne as Elizabeth. By doing
so, Knox harmed the Protestant cause ; he made the
alliance between England and Scotland more difficult
to accomplish ; and he offended some of his own warmest
friends. Calvin censured the Blast, and spoke of the
author with some asperity. Knox himself was so far
convinced of the inexpediency of pursuing the subject
that, though tempted by replies, he refrained from follow
ing it up as he had intended with a second and a third
blast. "-

But the Knox of literature is Knox as he portrays himself,
his age, and his country in the Historic of the Reforviatioun
of Religioun within the Realme of Scotia?id. This book
is so intimately connected with the author's life that in

H

1 1 4 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

the preceding sketch of his career much of the criticism
of it has necessarily been anticipated. Written in his
busiest years, and often uncouth in style and disjointed
from want of revision, it yet displays qualities far higher
and more varied than anything else that ever came
from his pen. Its position among histories is remark-
able, in truth not much short of unique. An original
authority written with the fullest knowledge by a man of
genius and incomparable force, who himself made the
history he narrates, is clearly a precious possession — at once
the richest storehouse of facts and the most vivid picture of
the age. The subject was exactly suited to the genius of
the writer. His whole being was absorbed in it. He had
to deal no longer with abstract and speculative religion, but
with religion reduced to action, influencing the conduct of
men and the destinies of nations, and weaving itself in with
politics and the life of courts and camps no less than with
the lives of families and individuals. The barriers which
seem in the treatise on Predestination to hem Knox in so
closely disappear, and he gives the world a bold, broad,
forcible picture of the Scotland of the sixteenth century.

T/ie History of the Reformation professedly leaves out
of account many of the elements in the life of the nation.
It is the work of a contemporary, subject to the errors
inseparable from nearness to the events narrated. It is
the work also of a partisan deeply committed to a particular
view of the central controversy, and incapable of sympathy
with the other side. Nevertheless it is incomparably
the best account of the time. The limitation to mat-
ters of religion is less cramping than it might seem;
for in that age above all others the question of religion

JOHN KNOX. 115

included everything; and the undoubted prejudice of the
writer is balanced by his transparent truthfulness, and the
courage and intense conviction which disdains, or rather
never dreams of concealment. The history is therefore
a trustworthy record of the knowledge of the man who
knew most about the most important questions of his time.
How far it towers above all other annals of the age can
only be seen by comparison. In a generation and country
in which the Diurnal of Ocacrrents may be taken as typical
of the prevalent notion of history, Knox does not merely
note down events. He marshals and arranges, selects and
rejects, gives each fact its due place in what to him and to
his readers is not a mere dead chronicle but a great and
absorbing drama. The men and women in his pages are
alive. They are persons whom he has met, with whom he
has held familiar converse, and of whose characters he has
in every case formed his own strong and vivid conception.
The picture he presents may not, in the dispassionate
judgment of later ages, be a true likeness, but it is always
the picture of a man, never of a lay figure. Every person
he touches upon, every incident he relates, stands clearly
out in the light of his indignation, his scorn, or his hearty
sympathy and liking. The note of hesitation is rare
indeed ; for Knox was almost as much a stranger to doubt
as he was to fear — that is, after he had once made up his
mind, which on important matters he did slowly and
laboriously. Above all he had the gift of humour —
humour of a ponderous rather than an elegant or playful
cast it is true, but humour deep and genuine. Perfect
mastery of the subject, insight alternately sarcastic and
sympathetic, intense conviction, burning wrath against

Il6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

wrongdoers (which means opponents), and inimitable vigour
of style, are the leading characteristics of Knox's history ;
and these are so mingled and sustained that from begin-
ning to end the book is never dull. The reader, if he
chances to differ from the author on politics or religion,
may be roused to anger, may denounce the bigotry, the
hardness, the narrowness, the egotism of the writer, but
he cannot find him tedious.

The History, Sihtx a preliminary sketch of previous religious
movements in Scotland, and particularly that of the Lollards
of Kyle, makes a formal beginning with the martyrdom of
Patrick Hamilton in 1528, and from that point traces the
development of the religious controversy down to the close
of the year 1564, where the fourth book ends. The story
is continued in a fifth book, which however was never
finished by Knox, but compiled after his death from his
papers. For the whole of this time Knox is an original
authority of the highest rank and best type. He was over
twenty years of age at the death of Hamilton ; and even in
the years of his banishment he was so closely connected
with the religious movement, that his authority in relation
to those years is only less than that which belongs to him
in the time when he was himself the chief actor.

The most interesting questions which the Uisioty suggests
with reference to its author as a man and a historian are,
first, his tone with regard to his enemies, the Catholics ;
secondly, the nature of his relations with Mary; and thirdly,
as affording a wider ground for judgment, his habitual
attitude towards those with whom he was brought into close
contact, either friendly or hostile. But indeed all parts of
the History throw light upon Knox's own character. His

JOHN KNOX. 117

unmistakable stamp is upon it ; and the charge of egotism
has frequently been preferred against him because he makes
himself the central figure of his own book. He certainly
is the central figure ; and it is not difficult to detect evid-
ences of egotism. Nevertheless the accusation loses its
weicrht when it is remembered that Knox could not but
depict himself as the mainspring of the movement in
religion without distorting facts and throwing everything
into a false perspective.

Knox's language about the Catholics is such as might be
expected from his character and circumstances. He held
the most pronounced opinions, and expressed them with
all the vigour of which words are capable. His vocabulary
of abuse is rich and varied : — " Baales bleatting preastis,"
" idiot Doctouris," " Gray Freiris and Blak feindis," " Black
thevis alias Freiris." Whatever savoured of Popery set his
blood aflame. There was nothing in life he enjoyed so
much as the opportunity of striking a downright blow at the
Pope or his priests, unless it were the delight of recalling
and relating as a " meary bourd " some scandal reflecting
disgrace upon the Church. These same merry bourds or
jests of Knox's have been the source of no small difficulty
to many of his admirers. They are inconsistent with the
gravity and dignity of a Reformer who ought to be, but
persists in proving that he is not, superior to human
weaknesses. So offensive were the stories that they
sharpened the scent of the hunters after anachronisms which
were to prove that the History was not written by Knox at
all.^ But the objections disappear as soon as we consent

^The mistakes and inconsistencies they discovered have long since
been shown to be due to interpolations.

1 1 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

to regard Knox as a man of like passions with ourselves, a
man rejoicing, as meaner mortals sometimes do, to catch an
enemy tripping. The worst that can be said of his stories
is that in one or two cases they illustrate the sixteenth cen-
tury habit of calling things by their plain names. And on
the other side of the account must be set the liveliness they
give to the narrative and their positive historical value.
How could Knox better illustrate the degradation of the
cursing of the Church than by the ludicrous quotation from
Friar William Arth % — " Ane hes tynt a spurtill. Thair is
ane flaill stollin from thame beyound the burne. The good-
wyiff of the other syd of the gait hes tynt a home spune.
Goddis malesen and myne I geve to thame that knawis of
this geyre, and restoris it not."^ No satire could be more
effective : nothing in Lindsay on the subject is so pointed.
But perhaps this side of Knox's mind is best illustrated by
the story of the ridiculous quarrel between Dunbar, Arch-
bishop of Glasgow, and Cardinal Beaton about the bearing
of their crosses — a story accessible to every one in Carlyle's
essay on the portraits of Knox. The other "merry
bourds " breathe a similar spirit, though some of them
would in the present day be thought more objectionable.
There is nothing in them, nor in the History as a whole,
that need seriously shock anyone who is prepared to hear
a Reformer chuckle grimly over a scandalous tale, or
who can sympathise with the stern joy of smiting a foe
under the fifth rib. And a little reflection will lessen
any distaste that may still be felt. It was rough work that
Knox had to do, work demanding much more imperatively
vigour than courtesy. The man of delicate sensibilities,

^ History, I. 38.

JOHN KNOX. 1 19

the man who shrank from rough methods, and who shud-
dered at the suggestion of coarseness, would never have
attempted what he accomplished.

These, however, are matters which pain chiefly the be-
lieving disciples of Knox. The Catholics of his own day
and the advocates of religious liberty of recent times would
draw up a stronger indictment against him. They would
denounce him as intolerant, a preacher of persecution, and
a justifier of assassination ; and they could prove each
point. It would be waste of time to discuss the question
of tolerance. Knox did not know the meaning of the
word ; no more did anyone else in that age who was
deeply engaged in the religious dispute on either side. A
few laymen like Lethington may have grasped the idea;
but it was because they were connected with the contro-
versy only by accident. A more pregnant question, and
one by no means so simple as it seems, is how far this
intolerance can be justified. Knox's position is clearly
laid down in the treatise on Predestination: — "We say,
the man is not persecuted for his conscience, that, declin-
ing from God, blaspheming his Majestic, and contemning
his religion, obstinately defendeth erroneous and fals doc-
trine. This man, I say, lawfully convicted, if he suffer
the death pronounced by a lawful Magistrate, is not per-
secuted (as in the name of Servetus ye furiously complein),
but he suffereth punishment according to God's command-
ment, pronounced in Deuteronomie, the 13 chapter." ^ But
it must be added that, although this theory would have
justified atrocities like the worst of Calvin's acts, Knox's
hands were never stained with blood shed on account

1 Works, V. 231.

120 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

of religious opinion. Not that he shrank from blood when,
as he thought, occasion called for it. He rejoiced over the
death of Beaton. He was equally satisfied with the fate
of "that pultron and vyle knave Davie" (Rizzio), who
was "justlie punished"; and Morton, Lindsay, and
Ruthven, his slayers, are described as " unworthely left
of thare brethrein." And yet on other occasions, when
men of more moderate opinions would have felt free to
act, Knox shows the most scrupulous regard for life.
When he was consulted by his fellow-prisoners in the
galleys on the question whether they were justified in
making their escape, he pronounced that they might if it
could be done without bloodshed. It is to be noticed
that though Knox's ex post facto approval of the assassina-
tion of Rizzio and Beaton is demonstrated, there is no
proof that he knew in either case of the design before it
was accomplished. It may be suspected, therefore, that
the persecutor who never persecuted,^ the prisoner unjustly
confined who would not slay his gaoler for liberty, though
he might breathe fire and slaughter after the fact, would,
had he been consulted beforehand, have raised his voice
for mercy. At the worst, Knox's intolerance is always
respectable, for it rests on a reasoned conviction and is
never the result of a blind zeal divorced from understand-
ing. There are, as Tulloch has pointed out, twelve years
of significant silence and obscurity in Knox's life, during
which, if we may judge from the position in which we
find him at the beginning and the end of the period, he
must have been gradually working his way from Romanism
to Protestantism. After such an apprenticeship, and a life
^ I refer to persecution to the death.

JOHN KNOX. 12 1

spent in maturing and confirming the opinions then formed,
it is pardonable if those opinions were strongly and un-
yieldingly held.

Knox's opinion of Mary and his relations with her have
been already discussed. There is much in them that throws
light upon the man ; yet perhaps it is by a reference to
his promiscuous judgments of his contemporaries that we
best learn the strength and weakness of his character, the
extent and the limits of his insight as a historian. He
was keen and penetrating whenever his wits were sharpened
by opposition ; but to the man who met him in the guise of
a faithful professor he was guileless as a child. It was only
after long experience that he was able in part to fathom the
character of Lethington. He accepted without reserve the
account which that astute diplomatist gave of his desertion
of the Queen Regent in the crisis of the struggle between
her and the Protestants : " Quhensoever matteris came in
questioun, he spared not to speik his conscience ; whiche
libertie of toung, and gravitie of judgement, the Frenche
did heyghlie disdane. Whiche perceaved by him, he con-
voyed him self away in a mornyng, and randered him
self to Maister Kirkcaldy e. Lard of Grange." ^ And in
his earlier discussions with Lethington, whenever the
latter can keep his bitter tongue from open sarcasm,
Knox misses entirely the undercurrent of dissent which
accompanies his opponent's expressions of conviction.
Again, he takes the professions of the Scottish nobility
as due entirely to love of religion, and dreams his
dream undisturbed until their conduct on the question of
the Church property makes it only too manifest that their

1 History, I. 463.

122 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

motives were mixed. On the other hand, if his friends
differed from him on questions which Knox considered vital,
he did not spare to denounce them. Even Murray he
broke with absolutely for a time ; though it should be re-
marked that while condemning Murray's policy he had
nothing to say against the character of the man.

Evidently it is necessary to test Knox's judgments by
reference to something else ; but this is the less difficult
because, as the course of events opens his eyes, he himself
often furnishes the means of correction. His errors are
those of a man of strong passions, credulous for good where
those who professed his own faith were concerned, for evil
in respect of all who were tainted with the pollution of the
Scarlet Woman ; but they are minimised by his invincible
truthfulness and by a natural acuteness which, once excited,
seldom failed to penetrate to the heart of a question. We
must reject many of the stories which Knox accepts without
misgiving from public report ; but it is seldom that his
deliberate judgment on matters of weight has to be re-
versed. He had the endowments of a statesman in
remarkable measure, and in the most unfavourable cir-
cumstances those endowments commanded recognition.
It has already been pointed out that even Elizabeth had
to recognise in him the true mouthpiece of Scotland.
The statesmanlike mind is visible too in his work as a
reformer. It is in the direction of ecclesiastical polity
that he is most original. While he follows the model of
Geneva, many important elements in the Presbyterian
system of Scotland are the original contributions of Knox,
or of Knox and his fellow-ministers ; for it is, as a rule,
impossible to disentangle his work from theirs. The

JOHN KNOX. 123

changes since made have in general had the effect of
narrowing and hardening the system which we associate
with the name of the great Reformer; for in his day the
quarrel with Episcopacy was not so embittered as it
afterwards became.

Knox was a Puritan, though a Puritan of very massive
build ; and he had his share of the Puritan faults, their want
of sympathy with art and with the popular forms of recrea-
tion, and their tendency to misjudge all the non-religious
aspects and elements of life. The Scottish Reformers, like
the English Puritans, set their faces against the games and
shows of the day, and in so doing brought themselves into
violent conflict with the mob of Edinburgh, then just
learning its own strength and developing those habits of
turbulence which it retained for generations after. They
had no appreciation of the innocent gaieties and elegancies
of life, and often denounced Mary and her ladies for
conduct in which the modern eye sees little to blame.
It must however be remembered that the amusement at
which they railed most fiercely, the dance, has greatly
changed since the sixteenth century. Some forms of it
had then a meaning, and a meaning best left in obscurity.
On one occasion Knox's moralising on the fripperies of
life is irresistibly quaint as well as grim. After an angry
interview he had been sent from the Queen's cabinet to wait
in an outer room, where he began " to forge talking of the
ladyes who war thair sitting in all thair gorgious apparell ;
which espyed, he mearelie said, ' O fair Ladyes, how pleasing
war this lyeff of youris, yf it should ever abyd, and then in
the end we myght passe to heavin with all this gay gear.
But fyeupoun that knave Death, that will come whitther we

1 24 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

will or not ! And when he hes laid on his areist, the fouU
wormes wilbe busye with this flesche, be it never so fayr
and so tender, and the seally sowll, I fear, shalbe so feable,
that it can neather cary with it gold, garnassing, targatting,
pearle, nor pretious stanes.' " ^

Yet Knox was no kill-joy. So far as he seems so, it
is the result rather of the iron creed he had adopted than
of the native disposition of the man. There was kindliness
and even jollity at the root of his character. These quali-
ties constantly appear in the humour which permeates his
writings, and more touchingly on the rare occasions when
they are suffered to modify his judgment, or at least his
language. There is a passage in James Melville's Diary
which shows Knox in a light that will be new to many.
Regarding Morton's appointment of John Douglas as
Bishop of St. Andrews, he says, " I hard Mr. Knox speak
against it, bot sparinglie, because he louit the man, and
with regrat, saying, ' Alas ! for pitie, to lay vpone an auld
weak man's bak, that quhilk twentie of the best gifts could
nocht bear. It will wrak him and disgrace him.' " - One
of the closing acts of Knox's life was prompted by a regard for
the "creature-comforts" of his friends. Within a few days Of
his death two of them came to dine with him. He pierced
a hogshead of wine for their entertainment, and " willed
them to send for the same so long as it lasted, for that
he would not tarry till it was drunken." •'

All that is known of Knox prepares us to find him
greater as a preacher than in any other capacity that
can be measured by a literary standard. Unfortunately

^History, II. 389. - Wodrow Society ed., p. 31.

^ Bannatvne's Memorials.

JOHN KNOX. 125

the materials for forming a judgment are scanty. One
complete sermon and a few summaries and fragments
are all that remain of that pulpit eloquence which made
him singly a match for all the forces that could be
arrayed against him. These poor remnants cannot fail
to be impressive to any one who thinks of the issues
which hung upon them when they were uttered ; but it
is difficult, for a Scotchman perhaps above all, to be
just to the abridgements which Knox has occasionally
given in his History. Three hundred years of denuncia-
tions against the Pope as the Man of Sin, the Antichrist,
and so on, have somewhat weakened the force of these
expressions. But it is a different matter where the ipsissima
verba are preserved. Sometimes in tones of noble and
solemn eloquence, sometimes with an energy of denunciation
almost portentous, Knox rouses his hearers to maintain
their cause, or scares them from the paths of sin. We
hardly look to him for an illustration of what Matthew
Arnold has called the " grand style " : he seems to lack
an element of self-restraint necessary to it. And yet it
would be difficult to find a better example of the grand
style in prose than the passage which follows. The
words were spoken at a time when Knox thought he
perceived signs of backsliding, when those who had
been hitherto the most faithful supporters of the Reforma-
tion seemed to him to be deserting the cause, and he
was estranged even from Murray. It was in such cir-
cumstances that Knox's genius always flamed highest: —
" In the progresse of this corruptioun, and befoir the
Parliament dissolved, Johne Knox, in his sermon befoir
the most parte of the Nobilitie, began to enter in a deape

126 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

discourse of Goddis mercyes which that Realme had felt,
and of that ingratitude quhilk he espyed ahiiost in the
hoill multitude, which God had niarvelouslie delivered
from the boundage and tyrannye both of bodye and saule.
'And now, my Lordis,' said he, *I praise my God, throught
Jesus Christ, that in your awin presence I may powre
furth the sorowis of my hearte ; yea, your selfis shalbe
witnesse, yf that I shall maik any ley in thingis that ar
bypast. From the begyning of Goddis myghty wirking
within this Realme, I have been with you in your most
desperat tentationis. Ask your awin consciences, and
lett thame answer you befoir God, yf that I (not I, but
Goddis spirite by me), in your greatest extremitie willed
you nott ever to depend upoun your God, and in his
name promissed unto you victorye and preservatioun from
your ennemyes, so that you wold only depend upoun
his protectioun, and preferr his glory to your awin lyves
and worldlie commoditie. In your most extream dangearis
I have bein with you : Sanct Johnestoun, Cowper Mure,
and the Craiggis of Edinburgh, are yitt recent in my
heart ; yea, that dark and dolorouse nyght whairin all
ye, my Lordis, with schame and feare left this toune, is
yitt in my mynd ; and God forbid that ever I forgett it.
What was (I say) my exhortatioun unto you, and what
is fallen in vane of all that God ever promised unto you
by my mouth, ye your selfis yitt lyve to testifie. Thair
is nott one of you against whom was death and destruc-
tioun threatned, perished in that danger : And how many
of your ennemyes hes God plagued befoir your eyis !
Shall this be the thankfulness that ye shall render unto
your God, to betray his cause, when ye have it in your

JOHN KNOX. I 27

awin handis to establesh it as ye please? The Quene,
say ye, will not agree with us : Ask ye of hir that which
by Goddis word ye may justlie requyre, and yf she will
not agree with you in God, ye ar not bound to agree
with her in the Devill: Lett hir plainelie understand so
far of your myndis, and steall not from your formar stout-
ness in God, and he shall prosper you in your interpryses.' "^
But the preacher's habitual style seems to have been
fierier, more headlong than this. All that was in Knox
found expression from the pulpit; his self-confidence, his
scorn and humour, his hostility, and his affection. There
exists fortunately contemporary evidence of the effect of
his preaching upon his hearers. James Melville, then a
lad of fifteen, records the impression Knox produced upon
him at St. Andrews in 1571 : — "I hard him teatche ther
the prophecie of Daniel that simmer and the wintar follow-
ing. I haid my pen and my litle book, and tuk away sic
things as I could comprehend. In the opening upp of
his text he was moderat the space of an halfif houre ; bot
when he enterit to application, he maid me sa to grew and
tremble, that I could nocht hald a pen to wryt."^ Still
more impressive, as one of the most remarkable examples
of the power of indomitable spirit to triumph over bodily
frailty, is the sketch which the same diarist has left of the
old man just before his death in 1572 : — " I saw him everie
day of his doctrine go hulie and fear, with a furring of
martiks about his neck, and guid godlie Richart Ballanden
his servand, haldin upe the vther oxtar, from the Abbey
to the paroche Kirk, and be the said Richart and another

'^History, II. 384.

"^ Autobiography and Diary, Wodrow Soc, p. 26.

128 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

servant, lifted vpe to the pul[)it, whar he behovit to lean
at his first entrie, hot or lie haid done with his sermont,
he was sa active and vigorus, that he was lyk to ding that
pulpit in blads and flie out of it." ^

Even scepticism need hardly grudge to this impressive
figure the crowning glory which early admirers claimed
for him — that of the power of prophecy. More recent
followers have sought to deny that he himself advanced
such a claim, or to explain it away. But surely denial and
explanation are alike hopeless and unnecessary. Whatever
may be thought of the reality of the gift, the belief that he
possessed it sits not ill on him who, as Carlyle says, "re-
sembles more than any of the moderns an old Hebrew
prophet " ; and there can be little doubt that the belief was
genuine. In a great many cases Knox speaks simply as the
interpreter of " the ways of God to man " with the ordinary
means at his command — Scripture, the rules of right and
wrong, the past dealings of Providence. But certainly in a
few cases, in the prediction of the fate of Thomas Maitland
and of Kirkcaldy of Grange for instance, we detect the con-
fidence and precision of the seer. It is only to the modern
mind that this is a stumbling-block. We should either
despise the intellect or suspect the honesty of the man who
should now indulge in such vaticinations, and we forget that
at the Reformation the idea of a special enlightenment was
familiar to every mind, and such enlightenment claimed by
the best and most sincere.

'^ Autobiography and Diary, Wodrow Soc, p. 33.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ANGLO-SCOTTISH POETS OF THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

It has become a commonplace of criticism that any pro-
found agitation of the human mind, however apparently
foreign to literature, is favourable to literary activity ; and
it is customary to point by way of illustration to the effect
of the political activity of Athens in the age of Pericles
upon the Athenian mind, of the French Revolution upon
Europe at large, and of the Reformation more especially
upon England. There is much truth in this doctrine ; but
facts do not justify the laying it down as an absolute rule.
The Reformation and Renaissance in Scotland yield no
equivalent to the poetry of Spenser and Shakespeare, the
prose of Bacon and Hooker. On the contrary, when these
forces had been fully developed we observe decay rather
than progress in letters. The golden age of Scottish poetry
is to be found in the time of James IV., before the Refor-
mation, not after it, in the time of Mary. The great
collections known as the Bannatyne and Maitland MSS.
would almost seem to have been made under a kind of
prescience that the art enshrined in them was a declining
one and required to be preserved. A century and a half

130 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

passed before it again flourished as it had done up to the
time of Lindsay. The ecclesiastical disputes which filled
this long period were sufficient to keep the country in a
state of unrest, but they were not of a character to produce,
nor did they in fact produce, new ideas. They rather
withered them. It is easy to understand how Luther's
struggle for righteousness and purity against corruption
throned in high places, or how the revolutionary cry —
generous even if in part mistaken — of liberty, fraternity,
and equality, stirred the minds of men to great thoughts
as well as to great deeds ; but to expect the same
results from the petty quarrels of prelate and presbyter
would be to show blindness to proportion. And it was
the misfortune of Scotland that her Reformation, begun
greatly and, as a struggle for freedom, rising occasionally
to greatness even in later days, too often and too long
dealt only with the trivial and commonplace.

The period thus adversely affected by the theological
divisions within the country is not indeed an absolute
blank in literature, but its productions are at once few and,
alike in prose and in poetry, different in character from
those of Pre-Reformation times. The earlier writers are
distinctively Scotch. From the time of the War of Inde-
pendence downwards the writers north of the Tweed have
ideas and characteristics of their own which mark them off
from their English brethren. After the Reformation the
differences begin to be effaced. Even the prose of Knox
is partly Anglicised ; and after Knox the process of
assimilation goes farther. Many causes combined to pro-
duce this result. Every event which weakened the old
alliance with France, everything which drew Scotland

POETS OF THE XVI I th CENTURY. 131

politically nearer to England, tended towards it. The
union of the crowns promised it permanence. Under any
circumstances the accession of James VI. to the English
throne would have been an event of the highest import-
ance ; in the actual state of affairs it worked for the time,
but only for the time, a revolution in literature. The king's
own literary tastes made his influence greater than that of
the ordinary sovereign would have been. While he was still
in Scotland the small band of poets and poetasters had
learned to look to him as the source of honour, and to
bow with at least assumed deference to his canons of
criticism. They took their satisfaction underhand in prais-
ing one another's works, and in comparing them with those
of the royal scribbler, not to his advantage. Many of
these men followed James to England, and formed around
him one of those bands of " beggarly Scots " whose
presence enraged his English subjects.

At a somewhat earlier time it is possible to trace other
external influences on Scottish poetry besides the influence
of England. Italian poetry, which through Wyatt and
Surrey told so powerfully on English, affects similarly,
though less directly and at a later date, the poetry of
Scotland. It is traceable in the new forms and models
which exercised the ingenuity of Montgomery, as well as
in the translations of William Fowler and Stewart of Bal-
dynneis. But the models of the Scots who frequented
the English court of James were English. They were
however not of the young and vigorous dramatic school.
The sonneteers and euphuists were more congenial, more
adaptable to the purposes of court panegyric and affected
raptures ; for the curse of patronage was upon these men.

1 3 2 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

At times, in their higher moods, they showed some of the
chivalrous quahties of Sidney; in modes of thought and
turns of expression they sometimes anticipated the CavaUer
poets. They were Hke the CavaHers in this, that if we
except Drummond of Hawthornden, a man who led a hfe
apart, they had little of the character of professional
writers. Sir Robert Ay ton, who on occasion soared
above any of them, left behind but a i^^ pieces. Sir
Robert Kerr, afterwards Earl of Ancrum, whose contem-
porary reputation stood high, is now known only by a
version of the Psalms and one fine sonnet addressed to
Drummond of Hawthornden and printed with his works.
Montrose, who came later, resembled these men in the
scantiness of his verse. Those on the other hand whose
effusions were more bulky, like Sir William Alexander of
Menstrie, afterwards Earl of Stirling, Sir David Murray of
Gorthy, and Alexander Craig of Rosecraig, had unfortu-
nately but a small share of the fine frenzy. Their verse was
courtly to a degree. Scotland's tears on the departure of
James for England, Scotland's tears for his death, the joy
of her very rivers and mountains when the sovereign deigned
to revisit them, endless elegies on the death of Prince
Henry — these and the like were the favourite subjects
when the poets were not engaged in tinkering the royal
psalms and acting admiration of the royal talents. Yet
those men were admired in their day ; and one of them.
Sir William Alexander, won unmeasured commendation.
Even Drummond, himself a poet, and a man who did not
scatter his praises indiscriminately, considered him greater
than Tasso.^

^ Drummond was, however, a personal friend of Alexander.

POETS OF THE XVI I th CENTURY. 1 33

Alexander's works have been thought worthy to be
collected and published during the present generation,
not through the agency of those literary and anti-
quarian societies which have given a dubious immortality
to so many obscure scribblers, but as a private venture
In the edition issued by Maurice Ogle at Glasgow they
fill three respectable volumes, all solid versification ; for
the text is little encumbered with notes and the intro-
ductory matter is not bulky. There are therefore
ample materials for forming a judgment upon the pre-
decessor, and, as he was considered, the solitary rival
among Scotchmen of Drummond of Hawthornden. The
hitherto generally accepted date of his birth, 1580, is
almost certainly too late, and too late probably by about
a dozen years. If so, the greater part of his poems
must no longer be regarded as the productions of a man
quite young, but of one in the full maturity of his
powers. Alexander followed closely after James to Eng-
land, and thus came into personal contact with the great
Elizabethans. The subjects which then occupied his
own mind were of a nature to open it to the influences
around; for Darius, the first of the Monarckicke Tragedies,
had been published in Edinburgh in 1603, and the
others of the series were composed in the very years
when Shakespeare's great tragedies were being written
and acted. At this time Alexander held a position in
the household of Prince Henry, on whose death he
passed into the service of Charles. From the year 16 14,
when he was made Master of Requests, political advance-
ment much diminished his literary activity. His public
career was fatal also to his personal popularity. All the

1 34 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

leading affairs with which he was connected brought him
into deeper disrepute among his countrymen. The
enormous grant of lands in Nova Scotia made to him in
1621 was not in itself unpopular; but the arrangement
whereby those lands afterwards passed into the hands of
the French, stripping Alexander's Nova Scotian baronets^
of their possessions, was wrongly believed to have been
the result of a dishonest barter by him, and brought
upon liim the loud complaints of all who had bought an
interest in his domain. In the office of Secretary of
State for Scotland, to which he was advanced in 1626,
he earned a reputation for avarice which still further
blackened his name all over the country. As the repre-
sentative and mouthpiece of the court in the years when
the court was most unpopular, it was indeed impossible
for him to escape vituperation. His unfortunate con-
nexion with King James's version of the Psalms, in which
he had been the King's fellow-worker and counsellor, and
which after the accession of Charles he had been ap-
pointed to revise, brought him into direct collision with
the religious sentiment of the people. He obtained a
monopoly for thirty-one years of the right of printing the
royal version, which beyond doubt comes in part, pro-
bably in large part, from Alexander's own pen. It was
decisively rejected in Scotland and regarded with disfavour
in England ; and the efforts made to enforce its accept-
ance only confirmed the ill repute of the monopolist
who would have benefited by the success of those efforts.
Some of his countrymen traced the finger of Providence

^On payment of ^150, a man not only became a baronet of Nova
Scotia but received a grant of six square miles of land.

POETS OF THE XVI Ith CENTURY. 135

in his later fate. Though he continued a favourite with
the King, was raised to the peerage, and received various
honours, misfortune overtook him, and he died in 1640,
poor and unhappy.

Alexander's literary life, so far as it is marked out by
dates of publication, is practically confined within the
first eleven years of James's reign in England. It begins
with the publication of the tragedy of Darius in 1603
and ends with the Dootnesday in 16 14. Setting aside the
Encouragement to Colonies, the aim of which was practical,
not literary, and the work he did in patching up the
Psalms, he produced after the latter date nothing except
fugitive verses. But although Darius was the first piece
which he gave to the world, it is probable that his earliest
composition was Aurora, a collection of sonnets inter-
spersed with songs and madrigals, all on the subject of
love. He calls it " this childish birth of a conceitie
braine," and alludes to scenes of travel as if he were then
among them. It is therefore probable that Aurora was
written very soon after Alexander left college, when he
is known to have travelled on the Continent with Archi-
bald, seventh Earl of Argyll. The sonnets never reach a
high level. They betray in numerous ingenuities of fancy
and expression the " conceitie braine," and have all the
artificiality and more than all the monotony to be looked
for in so long a series devoted to the praises of a
mistress and lamentations of her cruelty. Still, the
author was young ; and it might have been expected that
greater experience in composition and the vigour of
mind coming from maturer years would have enabled
him to overcome his faults. That he disappoints such

1 36 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

hopes may be due to the stifling atmosphere of courtly
compHment in which he afterwards moved. A favourable
specimen of his style in Aurora may be found in the
eighth song, a description of the charms of the lady.
The ideas are, and were even then, hackneyed ; but
they are well strung together and gracefully expressed,
and the song, notwithstanding a feeble conclusion, deserves
more praise than it is possible to give to most of its class.

The other works of Sir W, Alexander are all, with the
exception of some fugitive pieces, of a more serious cast
than Aurora. The most obvious division among them
is that which would separate the dramas from the rest ;
but it is a distinction more apparent than real ; for the
Monarchicke Tragedies are of all dramas the least dra-
matic. They are slow in movement, full of repetitions,
destitute of living human characters, unfit alike for the
stage and the study. Little or nothing is given as
enacted ; there is not even vigorous and progressive
narrative, but, instead, windy commonplace reflections.
The funeral pace of the action may be measured by
the fact that the Alcxaiidraean Tragedy opens with a
long speech by the ghost of Alexander, bewailing that
nobody will bury him ; and in Act III., Scene 2,
Olympias and Roxana are still lamenting his death,
and have scarce any discoverable function but to
lament it. The tragedies in short are unlike almost any-
thing that the world is familiar with under the name of
dramas. They stand apart from the true Elizabethan
play with its abounding life, its vigorous action, its fulness
of present interest. As little, perhaps even less, have
they any vital relation to the classical drama. It is true

POETS OF THE XVI I th CENTURY. 1 37

there are superficial resemblances, as in the employment
of choruses ; but of the severe order, the artistic beauty,
the singleness of purpose, and the restraint of a Greek
tragedy there is no trace. The unities are cast to the
wind, not only those of time and place, which do not
matter, but that of action as well, which does. If Alex-
ander suggests anybody in the annals of dramatic com-
position it is Lord Brooke ; and that because of common
defects rather than common merits. The works of both
are equally preposterous as plays ; but Alexander's have
not the power and weight of thought which half redeems
Lord Brooke's tragedies.

It would be superfluous to examine in detail compositions
which possess so little merit. The most interesting, per-
haps, of the Monarchicke Tragedies, less for what it contains
than for the comparison it suggests, is the latest, Julius
Ccesar. It appeared first among the collected dramas in
1607,^ and may be taken, therefore, as a mature fruit of
the author's mind and literary experience. Most of the
great Shakespearian tragedies were then known to the
world ; and it is almost certain that his Julius Ccesar was
among the number. Yet Alexander's play presents no
evidence of a study of Shakespeare's tragedy. Similarities
of language and of matter may be all explained by refer-
ence to the original authorities from which both poets
borrowed. There are few things in literary history more
surprising than this picture of mediocrity cheerfully and
confidently steering its own course across the track of
genius, choosing the same subject but handling it quite

^ It is said by Collier, in his Shakespeare, that there was an earlier
edition in 1604.

1 3 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

differently, and to all appearance placidly assured of
superiority. Had Sir William Alexander been weak-
minded, the point would hardly have deserved notice.
But, though little of a poet, he was a man far above the
average in natural endowment, and familiar from boyhood
with the study of literary form and the art of expression.

The rest of Alexander's works are partly political, like
the Tragedies, partly religious. To the former class be-
longs the Paracfiesis to Prince He?iry, a poem of consider-
able length on the duties of a king. It has been extrava-
gantly praised; but the grounds of the panegyric are hard
to discover. There is evidence of considerable learning,
of keen intelligence, and on the whole of more independ-
ence of mind than was to be expected from a courtier
in the court of James. But independence of mind which
expresses itself in generalities is comparatively inoffensive ;
and the strongest of Alexander's utterances are not to be
compared with what James had been accustomed to hear
in his native country. The power which the Paraenesis
shows is however not of a poetic character. The piece is
in fact a treatise perversely thrown into metrical form. This
offence was one which was committed by all the so-called
philosophical poets of the time as well as by Alexander ;
and it brought upon them this retribution, that having
wilfully confused the boundaries of the two forms of com-
position, when they did choose a poetic subject they were
never safe from lapsing into prose.

The pieces into which the element of religion enters
largely are two in number : an unfinished heroic poem,
Jonathan, which relates the story of the relief of Jabesh
by Saul ; and another poem called Doomesday, which in

POETS OF THE XVIIth CENTURY. 139

length almost rivals the other works of its author col-
lectively and in dreariness surpasses all. It is divided
into twelve "hours," and contains some 10,000 or 11,000
lines. Beginning with a sort of sketch of the world's
spiritual history, it goes on to describe the judgment, and
ends with a picture of the tortures of the damned and
the happiness of the blest. It is crude, seldom vigorous,
and hardly ever poetic. There is a great show of learning j
for to describe the multitude gathered for judgment the
poet ransacks not only Scripture but secular history and
mythology as well. The history however is not always
accurate, and is rarely informed with imagination ; the
theology is rather orthodox than enlightened. " Lycurgus,
Minos, Solon, and the rest," who "heavenly wits to worldly
ways did wrest," fare badly. In a word, the whole poem
is the laborious production of a man who had set himself
a task for which he was wholly unfitted. To have done
it well would have required a powerful imagination, which
Alexander did not possess. He presents the reader with
no pictures, only a series of catalogues — a catalogue of the
souls judged, a catalogue of the tortures of the damned,
a catalogue of the joys of heaven.

A review of Alexander's works, as a whole, leads then to
the conclusion that he was a man who mistook his vocation.
It would be easy to turn his verse into utter ridicule ; there
needs but a reference to the absurd inflation of the lines
beginning " No corpulent sanguinians make me feare," and
a comparison of Shakespeare's treatment of the same
passage in North's Plutarch, " Let me have men about me
that are fat," etc. But the student of Elizabethan literature,
knowing how uneven is the work of men much greater than

140 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Alexander, will be wary of receiving impressions from single
passages. Though nature never meant him for a poet, he had
sufficient fancy to sustain him in a short flight ; and practice
might have given him some share of that exquisiteness ot
expression which the lyric and the sonnet imperatively
demand. It would never have given his harder mind that
misty, dreamy idealism which is the great charm of his
friend Drummond of Ha\vthornden. Alexander's best
work is contained in the Aurora, and in occasional bits
of the tragic choruses. In 1637 he republished his
works under the title of Recreations tvith the Muses; but, for
some obscure cause, Aurora was omitted. The reason may
have been some fact in the poet's life, though the sonnets
do not read as if any real passion lay beneath the poetical
expression ; or it may have been that they scarcely har-
monised in tone with the Tragedies and Doomesday ; but
probably the true secret of the exclusion was that the
author considered these light love-poems unworthy of him.
Ambition, combined with the precept and example of his
royal master, led him to attempt what he considered loftier
subjects, and to seek a place among the philosophic poets.
On those high themes " he numbrous notes with measured
fury frames" — for it is thus that he unconsciously, but
with too sure a hand, describes a style which is really
his own.

Of the followers of such a leader, the satellites of such a
poetical luminary, not much was to be expected. One of
them. Sir David Murray of Gorthy, trod in his life pretty
closely in the footsteps of Lord Stirling. He too deserted
Scotland for the fatter English pastures, became attached to
the household of Prince Henry, and sought to climb into

POETS OF THE XVIIth CENTURY. 141

the royal favour by way of Parnassus. His works are all
on the orthodox lines. We have a series of about twenty
sonnets, irregular, but sometimes rather prettily fanciful, to
a lady named Celia. There is also a larger and more am-
bitious poem on The Tragicall death of Sophonisba, wherein
Sophonisba is compared to Sidney's " faire, faire Philoclea."
The name of Murray's heroine is of \\\ omen to Scottish
poets. " O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O ! " was the line
which damned Thomson's luckless tragedy ; and the ex-
clamation might well be turned against the earlier poet.
His Sophonisba is tedious, inflated, and verbose. He had
not the power to write a poem of any length, though he had
a certain knack which serves well enough in shorter pieces
— provided his readers will consent to dispense with ideas,
for Murray is a mere imitator.

Another contemporary was Alexander Craig, " Scoto-
Britane," as he styles himself, the author of Poetical
Essays, Poetical Recreatiojis, and Amorous Songs, Sonets,
and Elegies. Like Stirling and Murray he strove, but at a
greater distance and with less success, to find his interest in
the fortunes of James. There is something pathetic in the
way in which the poor poet, animated by hope scantily
gratified, but never extinguished, seizes every occasion that
may recommend him at court. In truth Craig's lines did
not deserve much ; yet the numerous classical allusions
might have won the favour of a somewhat pedantic scholar ;
and the praise of the sovereign, who is now Apollo, now a
godly David, " a prophet and prince," must have given
some pleasure to ears greedy of praise and not fastidious as
to its quality.

Sir Robert Ayton, elegant courtier and accomplished

142 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

gentleman, is less bulky in his verse than any of these men,
but more poetical. Fortune smiled upon him from his
birth. He had the best education his native country could
afford, improved afterwards by residence in France; he held
an honourable position at Court, acting as secretary first
to Anne of Denmark, and afterwards to Henrietta Maria;
and as a mark of the royal favour — not much of a dis-
tinction at that time — he was knighted. Thus Ayton had
from his position abundant opportunity to learn all that
belonged to the ro/e of the fine gentleman. Among the
rest he learned to perfection the mode of writing appro-
priate to the character — to such perfection indeed that he
could soon instruct his teachers. He was one of the first
who wrote in what we are accustomed to call the Cavalier
manner. He has all the grace and light-hearted airiness of
the Cavalier, and he has also the under-current of earnest-
ness, of sincerity, and of loyalty to his mistress and his sove-
reign which saves the Cavalier from the charge of mere
trifling. Dryden did not exaggerate when he said that some
of Ayton's verses were among the best of that age.^ At his
best he is worthy to rank with any of the Cavalier poets.
But unfortunately, as he resembled them in other points, so
he did also in irregularity. As an author he is quite irre-
sponsible ; his pieces are merely fugitive, and they are few
in number. Perhaps this is, after all, not a matter for
regret. Those who are spiritually of kin to Ayton are
essentially fitful, strangely felicitous in their most careless
verses, but dull and heavy when they determine to make
a poem. Among Ayton's writings are printed some verses
on " Old Acquaintance," interesting in connection with
'John Aubrey quoted by Wilson, Scottish Poets.

POETS OF THE XVI I th CENTURY. 143

Burns's Auld Lang Syne; but their authorship is disputed ;
and it is also doubtful whether he wrote the verses be-
ginning, " I do confess thou'rt smooth and fair." Perhaps
the finest specimen of his work is the beautiful piece, On
a Wo/nan's Inconstaticy : —

" I lov'd thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief, as is the blame ;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unlov'd again
Hath better store of love than brain.
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.

" Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,
If thou had still continued mine ;
Yea, if thou had remained thy own,

I might, perchance, have still been thine.
But thou thy freedom did recal
That if thou might elsewhere inthral ;
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain.

" When new desires had conquered thee,
And chang'd the object of thy will,
It had been lethargy in me.

No constancy, to love thee still :
Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,

Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.

"Yet do thou glory in thy choice.

Thy choice of his good fortune boast :
I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice.
To see him gain what I have lost.
The height of my disdain shall be
To laugh at him, to blush for thee,
To love thee still, but go no more
A begging to a beggar's door."

144 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

The imitative poetry here described continued to flourish,
or at least to exist, under the shelter of the court, until
about the time of the great quarrel between King and
Parliament, which, as it affected Scotland, may be better
described as the quarrel between Presbytery and Epis-
copacy. In the latter part of this period of nearly forty
years however the connexion with the court was very much
loosened. The Stuart sovereigns could not at once thrust
off the poverty-stricken following of their countrymen ; but
they were from the first ashamed of it, and the kingly
Charles naturally objected to it more strongly than his
undignified father. Accordingly we find that though the
poets continued to paint the universe in sunshine when
the court rejoiced and to spread it with pall on occasions
of gloom, they spoke as a rule from a distance, whence
they were probably unheard as they were certainly little
heeded. Rank and position alone could save a man
from being thus elbowed aside. They saved the great
Montrose. We think of him more as the man of action
than the man ot letters, rather as the hero than the
hero's vates sacer. He was both. His verses are unequal ;
but some of them have lived in the minds of all who care
for poetry. Montrose was the ideal cavalier, complete at
all points — the hero in the field, the statesman in the
cabinet, the scholar in the library, the accomplished squire
of dames in his lighter moments. He is the only Scottish
successor of Ayton. His poems are so few that it almost
requires an apology to rank him as a poet. They show
too that uncertainty of touch which was common to the
Cavalier poets : in a felicitous moment he writes exquisitely,
in a less happy mood he sinks almost to doggerel. His

POETS OF THE XVIIth CENTURY. 145

best known lines are those to the tune, "I'll never love
thee more," and they illustrate forcibly this irregularity.
Some of the stanzas are in the finest style of the cavalier
love-lyric, others are intolerably frigid. Mark Napier, the
biographer of Montrose, sees in the whole, not a set of
love-verses, but a political composition, in which the
speaker is Charles and the mistress is the State. If this
opinion is right, and it harmonises well enough with the
taste of the time and the contents of the poem, the harsh
conceit upon which it is based must be regarded as a
fundamental defect of the poem. Nothing however can
spoil the felicity of these stanzas : —

"As Alexander I will reign,

And I will reign alone ;
My thoughts did evermore disdain

A rival on my throne.
He either fears his fate too much,

Or his desert is small.
That dares not put it to the touch

To gain or lose it all.

But if thou wilt prove faithful then,

And constant to thy word,
I'll make thee glorious by my pen,

And famous by my sword ;
I'll serve thee in such noble ways

Was never heard before ;
I'll crown and deck thee all with bayes,

And love thee more and more.

The golden laws of love shall be
Upon those pillars hung:

A single heart — a simple eye —
A true and constant tongue, —
K

146 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Let no man to more love pretend

Than he has hearts in store, —
True love begun will never end, —

Love one and love no more.

In the lines quoted below Montrose appears in another
mood. They are chargeable with bombast; but it is a
noble bombast, and it should never be forgotten that
Montrose's deeds had given a solid foundation to his most
swelling words. What would be ridiculous excess in a
common man is moderation in the mouth of the hero of
Inverlochy and Kilsyth.

On Charles L

Great, Good, and Just, could I but rate

My griefs and thy too rigide fate,

I'd weep the world to such a straine

As it should once deluge again.

But since thy loud-tongued blood demands supplies

More from Briareus hands than Argos eyes,

I'll sing thine obsequies with trumpet sounds,

And write thine Epitaphs in blood and wounds.

Montrose's place as a poet falls chronologically con-
siderably later than that of the men who have been pre-
viously mentioned. There is probability in the conjecture
of Napier that his verses may be mostly referred to the
year 1642 when, according to Baillie, he had "for this
long while been very quiet." There are still a few to be
noticed who were in time prior to him, but who have
been postponed as less intimately connected than he with
the court, which gives the tone to all this verse.

One of these was George Lauder, a man sprung of a
family devoted to letters and gifted with genius ; for he
was grandson of Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington.

POETS OF THE XVI Ith CENTURY. 147

His verse possesses the spirit of his family and of his
soldierly profession ; but he affects a pseudo-classical
style which is fatal to excellence, and it takes all his
vigour and all his qnaintness to win pardon for his
learning.

Another adventurer of a different type was Simion
Grahame, the dark saturnine author of The Anatomic of
Humours. Grahame, who had little else in common with
his contemporaries, agreed with the majority of them in
this, that he owed to James what he was, and looked to
him for what he hoped to be. His history is obscure.
He was born probably in Edinburgh about 1570. His
family must have had influence at court, for he was
educated under royal patronage ; but either court favour
left him or he left it. His early manhood was spent in
travelling. His fortunes however were bad, and his life,
it would seem, not much better. In 1604 we find him
in England, doubtless drawn thither by James. In that
year he published The Passionate Sparke of a Relenting
Mind, a small collection of verses remarkable only for
the grandiloquent and highly figurative prose dedication
to the King, conceived in a spirit, the memory of which
is preserved if not consecrated by the dedication of the
authorised version of the Bible. Grahame's much more
notable work, The Anatomie of Humours, appeared five
years later, inscribed to the Earl of Montrose, who was
also a Graham. It is a medley of often forcible prose
and of generally weak verse. Many will think that the
most memorable thing about the book is that it seems to
have given the hint to Burton for his Anatomie of
Melancholy. Yet Grahame's Anatomie is a work of no

1 48 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

common force, though it is repulsively and unnaturally
gloomy. The humours are nearly all of the vicious kind.
In the author's philosophy of human nature we can trace
the influence of his wandering life and the bitterness of
his own experience. There are numerous pictures of
typical characters, some of them indubitably powerful and
possessing that species of attraction which belongs to
certain kinds of horrors. Such for example are the char-
acters of the quack and of the latter-meat man (the
insignificant person for whom there is no room at a
great man's feast and who waits for the remains).
Grahame's further pursuit of letters was cut short by a
renewed exile, and, according to Dempster, in 16 14 by
death. He is said to have been a voluminous author,
but he is now known only by the two works mentioned.
Neither the atmosphere of a court nor the life of
homeless adventure is favourable to poetry ; and one or
other was the lot of most of the Scotchmen who cul-
tivated the art in the early part of the seventeen century.
There was however one exception, one man whose
happier star preserved him from the evils of both, and
gave him just those surroundings which best suited his
genius. William Drummond was the son of a Lothian
laird of good position. He was born 13th December,
1585, and educated at the High School and University of
Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1605. Soon afterwards
he went abroad to study law; but in 1609 he was in
Scotland once more ; and the death of his father in the
following year, making Drummond master of a com-
petency, banished from his mind all thoughts of seriously
prosecuting an uncongenial study. He retired to Haw-

POETS OF THE XVIIth CENTURY. 1 49

thornden, the domain for ever associated with his name
and memory, the "classic Hawthornden " and "caverned
Hawthornden " of later poetry, the haunt of the modern
tourist attracted thither partly by Drummond, partly by
Scott, partly by the natural beauty which charmed both.
The place might have been made by the gods for a poet
of Drummond's meditative, romantic temperament. He
felt that it suited him, and he lived there for many years
a retired life whose most exciting incidents were the com-
position and publication of his various works. The
leisure which this retirement gave him prompted Drum-
mond to those voluminous jottings which have in many
points proved so interesting to modern inquirers. Among
the rest are a catalogue of his library soon after the
death of his father, and various lists of the books
actually read by the owner of the library between the
years 1606-14. They are worthy of notice for the light
they throw upon Drummond's mind and habits. The
books marked as read number in all 220, including
much poetry, both English and French. The contents
of his library in 1610 were 267 Latin books, 35 Greek,
II Hebrew, 61 Italian, 8 Spanish, 120 French, 50
English — a very good collection for a country gentleman
of the seventeenth century, and one the linguistic pro-
portions of which are useful to remind us how much a
library of two or three centuries ago differed from a
modern one.^

For two years Drummond seems to have read and
vaguely meditated without visible result. He would prob-
ably have continued to do so longer but for the death

' These details are taken from Professor Masson's Life of Dnantnoiid,

I 5 O SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

of Prince Henry in 1612, an event which set almost every
Scottish pen scribbling, and a good many English to boot.
Teares for the Death of Mceliades, the earliest published of
Drummond's works, appeared in 161 3. It is a piece of
about two hundred lines, of little interest or value in itself,
but graceful and full of promise. It brought the author
into poetic contact with Sir William Alexander, whose piece
on the same subject appeared the year before. Drummond
shows himself from the outset the better poet of the two;
but the fame of Alexander, who was senior both as man
and as author, was so much better established that when, in
16 14, the pair met at Menstrie, Drummond felt himself
honoured by the regard of his fellow-poet. It is to the
credit of Alexander that he generously recognised the
power of the younger man. The two men became fast
friends, kept up a literary correspondence, and wrote
sonnets and other poetic compliments to one another
under the names of Damon and Alexis.

A more important event in Drummond's life, the most
important perhaps of all for literature, was his meeting
with a daughter of Cunningham of Barns, which seems to
have taken place about this time. He fell in love with the
lady, wooed and won lier ; the marriage day was fixed, but
before it came she died of a fever. Drummond's genuine
and deep affection for her and the tragic close of their love
had a profound effect upon his poetry. It strengthened
and confirmed the melancholy which, implanted by nature,
had been nourished by the quietude of Hawthornden. It
fed his mystic idealism ; it gave him, both during the lady's
life and after she was dead, a real subject for his muse; and
thus it did much to save him from that tendency to conceits

POETS OF THE XVI Ith CENTURY. 151

which was creeping like a canker into English poetry.
This passion is the source of nearly all the poet's next pub-
lication, the Poems: Amorous, Funeral!, Divine, Pastor all,
etc., which was issued in 161 6. These poems are Drum-
mond's most valuable contribution to literature. The series
of pieces commemorating his love is divided into two parts,
one prior, the other subsequent to her death. Together
they contain most of what is truly excellent in the author's
poetry ; only occasionally in later years did he rise as high.
His favourite measure, and that in which he was most suc-
cessful, was the sonnet, not always constructed on the strict
Italian model, but generally approximating to it, and
showing more regard for its rules and spirit than most o
the English sonnets loosely so called of the age of Elizabeth
The best of Drummond's pieces entitle him to a place in
the first rank of English sonneteers ; and it is to be
wondered that he has not, in virtue of these exquisite
poems, taken a higher place in the rolls of literature.
A few specimens will give the best idea of the grace
and harmonious beauty of Drummond's verse. The first
embodies a conception never long absent from his
mind, and here prettily turned to account to celebrate
his love : —

"That learned Grecian, who did so excel
In knowledge passing sense, that he is nam'd
Of all the after-worlds divine, doth tell,
That at the time when first our souls are fram'd,
Ere in these mansions blind they come to dwell,
They live bright rays of that eternal light,
And others see, know, love, in heaven's great height,
Not toil'd with aught to reason doth rebel.
Most true it is, for straight at the first sight

1 5 2 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

My mind me told, that in some other place
It elsewhere saw the idea of that face,
And lov'd a love of heavenly pure delight ;
No wonder now I feel so fair a flame,
Sith I her lov'd ere on this earth she came."

It is however in the second part, where he laments the
death of his mistress, that Drummond is at his best. There
are perhaps no sonnets in it which can be pronounced
decisively superior to one or two in the former part, but
it contains a much greater proportion of excellent work.
The poet generally chooses to approach the subject of his
love indirectly, but the following is expressly devoted to
it:—

" Sweet soul, which in the April of thy years
So to enrich the heaven mad'st poor this round,
And now with golden rays of glory crown'd
Most blest abid'st above the sphere of spheres ;
If heavenly laws, alas ! have not thee bound
From looking to this globe that all upbears,
If ruth and pity there above be found,
O deign to lend a look unto those tears.
Do not disdain, dear ghost, this sacrifice.
And though I raise not pillars to thy praise,
Mine offerings take ; let this for me suffice.
My heart a living pyramid I raise ;

And whilst kings' tombs with laurels flourish green
Thine shall with myrtle and these flowers be seen."

This again illustrates Drummond's feeling for nature and
the manner in which he wove it in with the idea of
his love : —

" Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers ;
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show'rs.
Thou turn'st, sweet youth, but, ah ! my jjleasant hours

POETS OF THE XVI I th CENTURY. 153

And happy days with thee come not again ;

The sad memorials only of my pain

Do with thee turn, which turn my sweet in sours.

Thou art the same which still thou wast before,

Delicious, wanton, amiable, fair ;

But she, whose breath embalm'd thy wholesome air.

Is gone ; nor gold, nor gems, her can restore.
Neglected virtue, seasons go and come,
While thine forgot lie closed in a tomb."

But though Drummond is happiest in the sonnet, he
can manage other measures with effect. The following
song reads Hke Herrick at his best, though it is more
serious than Herrick generally is : —

"O Pan, Pan, winter is fallen in our May,
Turn'd is in night our day ;
Forsake thy pipe, a sceptre take to thee.
Thy locks disgarland, thou black Jove shalt be.
Thy flocks do leave the meads.

And, loathing three-leav'd grass, hold up their heads ;
The streams not glide now with a gentle roar.
Nor birds sing as before ;

Hills stand with clouds, like mourners, veil'd in black.
And owls on cabin roofs foretel our wrack.

That zephyr every year
So soon was heard to sigh in forests here.
It was for her ; that wrapt in gowns of green.
Meads were so early seen.

That in the saddest months oft sung the merles.
It was for her ; for her trees dropt forth pearls.
That proud and stately courts
Did envy those our shades, and calm resorts,
It was for her ; and she is gone, O woe !
Woods cut again do grow.
Bud doth the rose and daisy, winter done,
But we, once dead, no more do see the sun."

In his later poetry Drummond is on the whole less

1 5 4 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

successful. The Florvers of Sion, published in 1623 along
with the Cyprcsse Grove, contains indeed some fine pieces,
one of which, the sonnet For the Baptist, may be quoted as
illustrating a side of the poet's mind and work which is
barely represented in the earlier poems : —

" The last and greatest herald of heaven's King,
Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he than man more harmless found and mild :
His food was locusts, and what young doth spring,
With honey that from virgin hives distill'd ;
Parch'd body, hollow eyes, some uncouth thing
Made him appear long since from earth exil'd.
There burst he forth : ' All ye, whose hopes rely
On God, with me amidst these deserts mourn ;
Repent, repent, and from old errors turn.'
Who listen'd to his voice, obey'd his cry?
Only the echoes which he made relent.
Rung from their marble caves, ' Repent, Repent ! ' "

As a rule however the ideas of the later poems are but
repetitions of those contained in the earlier, a fact which
points to the conclusion that Drummond's powers, though
exquisite, were narrow in their range. This criticism is
essentially true of the fine Hymn of the Ascension: it is still
more true of the Hymn of the Fairest Fair, a characteristic
poem embodying its author's philosophy of the universe.
For the rest, Drummond's poems include a collection of
epigrams and madrigals, some clear, some coarse, few
remarkable ; a number of miscellaneous pieces, some of
which are interesting for their bearing on contemporary
literature; and a collection of posthumous poems, many
of them relating to the politics of his time, but otherwise
of little value. There is also ascribed to Drummond the

POETS OF THE XVI Ith CENTURY. I 55

curious and amusing macaronic poem, Polemo-Middinia,
to which his name was first attached in the edition
published at Oxford in 1691 under the editorship of
Gibson, subsequently Bishop of London The first
edition known, which was published at Edinburgh in 1584,
was anonymous ; and there is no evidence except tradition
to connect Drummond with a composition utterly foreign
to his usual tone and habit of mind.

Meanwhile the fame of Drummond was steadily grow-
ing and his reputation becoming established as the first
man of letters in Scotland. The visit of James to his
ancient kingdom in 16 17 gave the poet a fresh opportunity
of playing the courtier, and the result of his labours was
the poem, Forth Feasting. It is startling to find the
pacific, not to say cowardly sovereign described as the
" Mars-daunting King " ; but if the adulation is gross, it
is no worse than that of others in Drummond's genera-
tion and the preceding one. The poets at that time seem
to have differed chiefly, not in independence, but in the
degrees of ingenuity with which their flattery was bestowed ;
and in this respect Drummond stands high. None of
the poems composed upon the occasion of this visit can
rival Forth Feasting. Its rhymed decasyllabic lines are
smooth, polished, and pointed to a degree which at
times almost anticipates Pope. The whole is skilful and
full of fancy, and the close is really eloquent.

Towards the close of 16 18, or in the beginning of 16 19,
occurred that visit from Ben Jonson which has given rise
to endless controversy with regard to Drummond's
character. The admirers of Jonson accuse the Scottish
poet of playing the spy upon and traducing the great

IS6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

dramatist who was his guest and who opened his heart
in the confidence of friendship. It cannot be denied
that the character at the end of the conversations is un-
generously drawn, but the conversations themselves are
sufficiently innocent. There is no evidence, nor likelihood,
that they were meant for publication ; nor were they
published till long after the writer's death. It is no
doubt an uncomfortable reflection for great men that their
most confidential and least considered remarks may be
set down in a permanent record ; and perhaps it would be
wiser on the part of the listener to think that he has no
right to take notes of conversations. But he who does so
is not necessarily a traitor. The bitterness of Drummond's
own remarks on Jonson is probably due to the angularities
of that rough and massive character fretting a disposition
retired, delicate, and somewhat finical. Silence would
have been in better taste ; but to take private notes and
to add, perhaps in a moment of pique, an estimate of
character, is not a grave offence. Giftbrd, in his zeal
for Jonson, exaggerated the fault of Drummond.

Shortly after the publication of the Flowers of Sion
the life of Drummond seems to have undergone a change.
Little is known about him until in 1626 we find him un-
expectedly amongst inventors ; and, being a man of peace,
he must needs contrive instruments of war. In 1627 he
obtained a patent for the construction of a variety of
military engines, and appears to have given much attention
to these projects. The poetic Paraeneticon which he
wrote for Sir Thomas Kellie's military treatise, Pallas
Armata, shows that his interest in such matters was not
limited to his own devices. In 16^2 he married. A

POETS OF THE XVI Ith CENTURY. I 57

political paper written in the same year on the subject
of the earldom of Stratherne, and some pieces in verse
occasioned by the visit of Charles I. to Scotland in 1633,
seemed to hold out some faint promise of a return to
literary interests. The disturbances, however, which arose
shortly after this visit proved an effectual and permanent
barrier to Drummond's converse with the muses. He
continued indeed to write occasional verses, but never
afterwards gave his whole mind to poetry, and never pro-
duced anything quite worthy of his earlier promise. He
wrote mostly in prose and upon politics, in the interest
of the royalist party. Among these prose works is an
ambitious and high-flown essay entitled Irefie, described
on the title-page as "a remonstrance for concord, amity,
and love, amongst his Majesty's subjects." A more
sustained work is the History of the Lives and Reigns of
the Five James's. It was finished about 1644, but not
published till eleven years later. Drummond wrote nothing
more of moment, and died in 1649.

The prose of Drummond does not fall within the subject
of this essay ; and all that he wrote in those years of tur-
moil may be passed over without criticism. There is
however an earlier essay, which, though prose in form,
has so much of the spirit of poetry that it ought to be
mentioned here. This is the Cypresse Grove, already men-
tioned as having been published along with the Floivers
of Sion. In this, unquestionably the most perfect specimen
of Drummond's prose, the author happily follows the bent
of his own mind, unburdened by any practical purpose. It
is an essay on death, written in the spirit of Plato and
ending in a dream corresponding to the Platonic myth.

I 5 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

A number of particular hints are borrowed from Bacon's
essay on Death ; one passage may be traced to Ben
Jonson's well-known lines, " It is not growing like a tree " ;
and others to other writers of the time. But Drummond
has made the thoughts his own, and has woven them into
a prose style often beautiful, and at its highest quite equal
to the best of his poetry. The essay however as a whole
is uneven. The language is at times laboured to a degree
almost painful, the imagery is frequently overwrought, and
sometimes degenerates into conceits. The following passage
is a specimen of Drummond at his best : —

" If on the great Theatre of this Earth amongst the
numberless Number of men. To dy were only proper to
thee and thine, then undoubtedly thou hadst reason to
repine at so severe and partial a Law : But since it is a
Necessity, from which never any Age by-past hath been
exempted, and unto which they which be, and so many
as are to come, are thralled (no Consequent of Life being
more common and familiar), why shouldst thou with un-
profitable and nought-availing Stubbornness, oppose so in-
evitable and necessary a Condition ? This is the High-way
of Mortality and our general Home : Behold what millions
have trod it before thee, what Multitudes shall after thee,
with them which at that same Instant run. In so universal
a Calamity (if Death be one) private Complaints cannot
be heard : With so many Royal Palaces, it is no loss to
see thy poor Cabin burn. Shall the Heavens stay their
ever-rolling wheels (for what is the motion of them but
the motion of a swift and ever-whirling wheel, which twineth
forth, and again uprolleth our Life) and hold still Time
to prolong thy miserable Days, as if the highest of their

POETS OF THE XVI Ith CENTURY. 159

Working were to do Homage unto thee? Thy Death is
a Pace of the Order of this All, a Part of the Life of
this World; for while the World is the World, some
Creatures must dy, and others take life."

This piece strengthens the impression derived from a
study of the poems, that while Drummond was to a rare
degree perfect within his own limits, his range was narrow.
It is further evident that there was a certain effeminacy
about his mind which made him largely the creature of
circumstance. The conditions of his life were long favour-
able to his genius; and even in his later days the distrac-
tions under which he personally suffered would not have
checked the productiveness of a robuster genius ; for he was
not, like Milton, a participant in the stormy events of the
time. But Drummond was a hot-house plant, and even
a slight breath of untempered air shrivelled him up. Prob-
ably however there is little to regret in the fact that his
best poetry was all written before he was thirty. It may
be doubted whether he could have done much more than
repeat what he had already said. There would have been
under other conditions more sonnets, sweet, musical, and
melancholy, perhaps more essays on themes of mysticism ;
but there would have been no great poem. For a short
flight Drummond can scarcely be surpassed, but his wing
soon tires. His most felicitous strokes are often single
lines 3 as in the epithets of spring in one of the sonnets
already quoted, " Delicious, wanton, amiable, fair " ; or,
from another sonnet, "The stately comeliness of forests
old." Such lines combine artistic skill with truth of
description.

It is worthy of remark that both these specimens of

1 60 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

Drummond's happiest art have reference to external nature.
Whether it was due to his long retirement at Hawthornden
or not may be hard to say, but the fact is certain that he
had a truer, more sensitive, and more catholic taste in
regard to natural scenes than any of his contemporaries,
English or Scotch. Professor Veitch has remarked that
he was the first to find beauty in one of the most beautiful
of natural objects, a snow-clad mountain. And while he
did not shrink from aspects of nature associated with
ideas of cold and physical discomfort, he revelled in those
which call up more pleasant reminiscences. Probably his
references to nature would be regarded by some critics as
artificial. But they are artificial only in the sense of being
the work of a painstaking artist, who does not permit his
art to degenerate into artifice or to interfere with truth.

It is not now difficult to characterise the poetry ol the
first half of the seventeenth century. It is in the first
place not Scotch at all, except in the sense that the
authors of it were born in Scotland. There were a few
writers of the time, like Sir William Mure of Rowallan,
who retained some flavour of the soil ; but native Scottish
poetry during almost the whole of the century was as
near as possible extinct. Among the Anglicised writers
there were several of more than respectable gifts ; but only
one, Drummond, whose achievements entitle him to a high
rank among poets. Even in him there is not sufficient
vigour to win for him a place among the greatest. Like
most imitative literature, the work of these men is essen-
tially second-rate. The force of the older poetry had been
lost along with its rudeness. But later on even this
imitative work also dwindled away, and it was not replaced

POETS OF THE XVI Ith CENTURY. l6l

by anything original. The period from the beginning of
the Civil War to the Revolution was the most barren in
the annals of Scottish literature. Poetry almost disap-
peared. In prose the activity was purely theological ; and,
though Leighton is a noble exception, the theology was
generally of an inferior character.

CHAPTER V.

THE POPULAR BALLADS.

Just upon the eve of the union of the ParUaments there
issued from the printing press of James Watson of Edinburgh
the first part of a work of comparatively humble pretensions,
but of great significance. It was entitled A Choice Colkctioti
of Comic and Serious Scots Foe?}is, both Aticicnt a?id Modern.
The three parts of which it ultimately consisted were pub-
lished in the years 1706, 1709, and 1711. The contents
range from genuinely beautiful poetry down to something
little better than doggerel. They consist partly of speci-
mens of popular poetry, the ballads and songs current
throughout the coimtry, partly of the effusions of more
learned poets. It is the former class of pieces which gives
to the collection its peculiar importance. We find in it
the first evidence in Scotland of an interest in such matters
sufficiently wide to justify a commercial venture; and the
spread of this interest may be taken as one of the proofs
of the gradual lightening of the theological yoke which
had pressed so heavily upon literature during the previous
century. Doubtless it was partly due also to English
example. Scotch music, Scotch songs, and Scotch ballads
had become popular in London ; and Durfey and his

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1 63

brethren did their best to supply the demand by imita-
tions. Their imitations won acceptance not only in Eng-
land, but in the country from which they professed to
have sprung. Transparent as the fiction generally was —
as regards the words at least — it passed current ; and time
has made it difficult in some cases to tell whether the
verses were originally English or were founded upon some
older Scottish version. The fashion of London reacted
upon Edinburgh. Everybody who was at all interested
in such matters knew that Scottish tradition and old half-
forgotten documents held the materials for volumes superior
to Durfey's. Watson set the example, and he was soon
followed by others. Ramsay explored the rich mine of
the Bannatyne MS. for his Evergreen ; and in The Tea
Table Miscellany supplied a collection of pieces suitable
to the kind of social gatherings indicated by the title.
Soon afterwards came the Orpheus Caledonius of William
Thomson ; and from that time forward there has been a
continuous series of collections of a similar kind. The
character of these collections in respect of accuracy of
research is a question by itself: it is enough here to note
that their appearance indicated a renewed interest in the
old poetry of the country, and especially an interest such
as had never before existed in the popular poetry of ballad
and song. The songs were the first to attract attention.
We have to wait until the publication of Percy's Reliques
before we find evidence of any wide interest in that species
of popular poetry which was meant to be recited or chanted.
There is however no doubt that the ballads as a body
are older than the songs ; and while songs of the true
Scottish type continue to be written to this day, the

1 64 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

spontaneous ballad, made for and heard by the people,
long ago ceased to be composed. Historically, therefore,
the ballads must be considered prior to the songs.

The subject both of the ballads and of the songs of
Scotland is extremely difficult. Their excellence and the
importance of their history would now be admitted on
all hands ; but when an attempt is made to trace them
back, it is found that facts constantly elude the grasp.
The reason is that old MS. authorities are so rare and
insufficient. Scott, Jamieson, Finlay, Maidment, Buchan,
and others have done an inestimable service to the
literature of the country in preserving the fragments of
its old ballad poetry ; but they had often no better
authority than the recitation of some old woman, who
preserved the tradition of the district ; and none of
these men, except perhaps Maidment, rose to the modern
standard of absolute and literal fidelity to the oldest or
best authority. Their versions are frequently the result
of collation, and sometimes they are interpolated. The
southern ballads, inferior in quality and' interest, have
the advantage, historically speaking, of having been earlier
written or printed than those of the north.

In the absence of written documents it is obvious that
dates can rarely be even approximately fixed. The test
of the style and tone of thought is, it is true, generally
sufficient to distinguish between the genuine ballad and
the modern imitation. Into the latter there creeps almost
inevitably some conception or turn of phrase which betrays
its origin ; and numerous as have been the changes intro-
duced unconsciously by the reciters, they are different in
kind from those which indicate the handiwork of the

1

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 165

modern editor. The reciters were too simple-minded to
invent poetic graces. From the test of style however it
would be dangerous to infer more than that a particular
ballad is old or that it is modern. Nor can very much
be learnt from the language. Far too great importance
has been in recent years attached to this test. If it
could be trusted, almost all the Scottish ballads must be
pronounced quite modern. But it is clear that composi-
tions handed down by tradition must undergo modifica-
tions from age to age, gradually assimilating their language
to the speech of the time. Within certain limits, valuable
results may no doubt be reached by the study of the
language of a ballad. The survival in verses orally trans-
mitted of an obsolete word or grammatical form affords
a strong presumption of the antiquity of the piece in which
it occurs ; but the absence of antiquated phraseology is
far from proving modern composition.

In determining the age of the ballads the chief reliance
must be placed upon such of them as embody or refer
to historical facts. The limits of time within which un-
rhymed oral tradition is capable of preserving the memory
of events have been fairly well ascertained. Facts may
live in this way for about three generations ; but only
the most important will survive so long, and these merely
in outline. If then we find a knowledge of long past
events handed down by means of ballads, the natural
inference is that those ballads, unless they are mere
imitations, must have been written shortly after the
occurrence of the events they commemorate. Judged by
this test, the ballads of Scotland stretch back over a
period of not less than six hundred years. The earliest

1 66 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

authenticated event recorded in a Scotch ballad is that
on which Sir Patrick Spe?is is founded. It is true that
the pretensions of Sir Patrick Spens to the character of
an old historical ballad have been impugned. Finlay,
in his Scottish Historical and Romantic Ballads, first
hinted doubt; and Laing in a note to Johnson's Scots
Musical Museu7n suggested that it was written by Lady
Wardlaw. It might be thought then that serious doubt
must rest upon the character of this ballad ; but in reality
the ascription of it to Lady Wardlaw is a striking
instance of the credulity which often accompanies ex-
cessive scepticism. It counts for little that the localities,
Dunfermline and Aberdour,^ are in the neighbourhood of
Sir H. Wardlavv's seat ; nor is it difficult to explain the
mention of " cork-heeled shoon," and other objects un-
familiar in the Scotland of the thirteenth century; for
no one ever denied that ballads are liable to be cor-
rupted in recitation. On the other hand, the evidence
in favour of the historical character of Sir Patrick is
strong. The incidents of the ballad agree so well with
a story preserved in the Scotichrotiicon that the only
natural conclusion is that the ballad-maker and the
historian founded upon the same facts. Unless therefore
the ballad-maker was in this case a person of learning
who borrowed from history, he must have lived so near
the events as to be intimately acquainted with them.
But, notwithstanding the Lady Wardlaw hypothesis, there

1 It is of course very doubtful if the Al)erdour referred to in the
ballad is the one which would naturally have occurred to Lady
Wardlaw ; but the critics seized upon the fact that she lived near
a place of that name.

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1 67

is not a scrap of evidence, nothing but a baseless con-
jecture, connecting any such person with the ballad. It
seems as fully established as it could well be on any but
ancient documentary evidence that Sir Patrick Spens
carries us back to the year 1281. Certainly no existing
version, in its present form, is as old or nearly as old as
this ; but if we accept it as a genuine old ballad we are
driven to the conclusion that the versions now current
have come down from a very ancient prototype, and have
probably only undergone the changes inseparable from
the mode of their transmission.

But Sir Patrick Spens stands alone. An interval of
more than a hundred years elapsed before the occurrence
of the next event commemorated in ballad poetry. The
ravages of time sufficiently account for the blank. There
were, according to Fordun, songs made about the adven-
tures of Wallace in France. Rude fragments of rhyme still
exist referring to one or two incidents in the struggle
with England; and it may be assumed that the principal
events of an active and exciting period were not left
unsung. But after Sir Patrick Spens there survives
nothing that can be called a ballad until we come to
those which relate to the Battle of Otterburn, fought
in 1388. Two sets of ballads, those of the Hunting of
the Cheviot and those of Otterburn itself, are commonly
associated with this great Border fight; but probably
they refer to distinct events. If so, we have in the
Chevy Chase ballads another historical thread leading
us back a long way. It is remarkable that in the case
of Otterburn the English version is older than the
Scottish ; while the Scottish version of the Hunting of

1 68 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

the Cheviot has perished altogether. That a Scottish
ballad on the subject existed seems to be proved by
The Complaynt of Scotland. In the list of songs there
given we find The hunttis of cheiiet. It is, no doubt,
possible that this may refer to the English ballad ; but
in view of the spirit of The Complaynt it is highly
improbable. The author has certainly quoted English
songs as sung by the shepherds ; but they are songs
which do not carry their nationality on their face. A
Scot so patriotic and so bitterly hostile to England
would never have included in his list a composition
ascribing victory to the English. Of the Scottish ballads
of the battle of Otterburn none in its present form is
ancient ; but there are references by the author of The
Complaynt of Scotland and by David Hume of Godscroft,
who wrote in the early part of the seventeenth century,
which prove that at least as early as their day there
existed a Scottish ballad, or perhaps more than one, on
the subject of Otterburn. The probability is that the
story of the battle was "done into rhyme" soon after it
took place.

In this way, by means of the facts which the minstrels
have recorded in their verse, it is possible to trace back
the line of the ballads for a very long time. There
are however only a few to which any considerable
antiquity can be ascribed. It is not until we reach the
sixteenth century that we can point to a tolerable body
of ballad literature ; and then we are upon the verge of
a great decline in quality. Of the numerous ballads
which can be proved to belong to the seventeenth
century few indeed are excellent. The Covenanters had

THE POPULAR BALLADS. i6g

not the gift of song, and their opponents were little
better.

But it is necessary to guard against the assumption
that because the historical ballads are those which afford
the best ground for determining age they are therefore
the oldest. On the contrary, it is probable that the
ballads of romance and superstition are of still greater
antiquity. All that is known of the development of the
human mind supports the belief that the unseen world
sooner interests and more profoundly moves the imagina-
tion than past facts. On a tribe just emerging from
barbarism the past has but slight hold, for the historical
sense is not yet awakened ; but such a tribe is deeply
stirred by the sense of the supernatural. A priori there-
fore we should expect to find tales of superstition at an
earlier date than ballads of history ; and this is borne
out by the facts so far as they can be ascertained. The
extreme antiquity of the superstitions embodied in the
ballads is beyond dispute. Stories of fairies, monsters,
and goblins run back to a very dim past. They are so
old as to be the property, not of a particular tribe or
nation, but almost of the human race. In this case
however it is necessary to distinguish between the question
of the origin of the tale and that of the antiquity of the
ballad which preserves its memory. And between the
historical ballads and the ballads of superstition there is
this important distinction, that while historical facts, un-
versified, will, as has been already observed, live in
popular tradition only a limited time, there is practically
no limit to the vitality of superstitions in any form.
While, therefore, we must suppose that historical facts, in

1 70 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

order to be carried in the popular memory, must have
been thrown into poetic form at no great distance from
the time of their occurrence, there is no reason why
superstitions may not have passed current for centuries in
ordinary prose narrative before they were made the
theme of a ballad. The backward limit of the ballads
of superstition must consequently be fixed, so far as it
can be fixed at all, not by the antiquity of the super-
stition itself, but rather by reference to the historical
ballads and by any casual evidence that may exist with
respect to particular tales. The line of the historical
ballads may apparently be traced back to about the
end of the thirteenth century. The ballads of super-
stition, there is reason to suppose, took their rise some
time earlier. But once more the gap between the
probable origin and the earliest documentary evidence is
enormous. The Talc of the Voting Tamlane appears
in the list of the Cotnplaynit of Scothind. It may have
been different from the ballad of Tattiiane in the
Minstrelsy ; but the name affords a reasonable presump-
tion that the one is connected with the other. Though
Scott's version, which is the result of collation, is con-
siderably modernised, it probably springs from an older
set of verses. But the ballads of this class which give
greatest assurance of antiquity are those which relate to
Thomas the Rhymer, and that just because they have
a historical setting. Thomas himself lived in the twelfth
century. The oldest poems recording his intercourse
with Fairyland and his prophecies are preserved in the
Thornton MS. at Lincoln, which dates about 1430-40.
But this version is certainly English ; and as all the MS.

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 171

authority is southern, it would be rash to build much on
those poems with reference to the poetry of the north.
It is however significant that this, the earliest assignable
date for the ballads of superstition, does lead us into
a remoter past than the historical ballads.

There are still other ballads, poems of sentiment and
love, which have no basis either in history or superstition.
These present little that is valuable for the purpose of
fixing dates. They are like the ballads of superstition in
the fact that as a rule they afford no evidence of their
starting-points. They are unlike them in this, that though
the emotions they express are primary elements of human
character, they are not so early the subject of verse as
are either facts of history or conceptions about a spirit-
life. Ballads of this description, therefore, are probably
as a class the most recent of all.

There seems then to be sufficient ground to conclude
with confidence that ever since the dawn of national
literature the Lowland Scotch have nursed and cherished
a popular poetry as genuine as that recognised by the
learned, and often higher in tone. It is true that the
primitive forms of this poetry are unknown to us in their
purity; but unless we adopt a hypothesis of wholesale
modern forgery, like the forgeries of Chatterton and Mac-
pherson, we must assume the substantial fidelity of most
of the modern versions to an ancient authority. In other
words, most of the Scottish ballads are genuine pieces of
popular poetry, not imitations, and some of them are in
substance of great antiquity. It would no doubt be more
satisfactory if it were possible to point to documents in sup-
port of these conclusions ; but comparison with the English

1 7 2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

ballads suggests the question whether the absence of such
documents is purely matter for regret. There are few of
the English ballads, particularly those of the south, which
can be ranked for poetic merit with the Scottish ballads.
Why this should be so it is difficult to say. Certainly it
cannot be that the race which, after the Greek, has proved
itself the most poetical of all races, was wanting in the
power and spirit from which fine popular poetry springs.
Perhaps the conjecture of Mr. Lang, in Ward's English
Poets, is the most probable that could be advanced— that
the English ballads suffered at the hands of half-educated
editors, printers, and transcribers, who, thinking to improve,
refined away the fire and energy and imagination of the
old minstrels. If so, it is really matter for congratulation
that the northern ballads in so many cases existed only
in the memory of the people until they were taken down
by men of taste and genius. We can spare the antiquity
in consideration of the beauty.

The subjects of the ballads are almost as various as the
interests of humanity. The wars between England and
Scotland, clan-feuds, moss-trooping raids, captures and
rescues, are all in turn the theme of the minstrel. All the
stronger passions— love, hatred, jealousy, revenge— become
likewise the subject of poetical treatment. But however
various the subjects may be, there is much uniformity in
the mode of handling them. The true ballad always takes
the form of a narrative; and this is one of the points in
which it differs from the song. The song is primarily the
expression of sentiment. The singer is the centre of his
own verse, and, if facts are introduced, they are subsidiary ;
but in the ballad the minstrel is merely the medium

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 173

for giving poetic expression to some outward fact or
event. His reflections therefore, if any, must be sub-
ordinate to the narrative. The ballad is also, in ac-
cordance with its popular character, marked by sim-
plicity, both in its substance and its external form.
Its metrical structure is unpretentions and not very
varied. The thought is without complexity, inartificial,
and, to a large extent, common property. There are con-
ventional endings, conventional methods of sending and
of receiving news, conventional ways of acting in certain
recurrent circumstances. These conventionalities serve
various purposes. As the commentators on Homer have
often pointed out, they serve to give relief to the reciter
or chanter J they are a kind of level ground over which
he can pace mechanically without strain on the memory.
They also frequently mark time, as it were, for the audience.
The familiar crisis in the fight, the familiar action on receipt
of important tidings, the familiar details of the lady's beauty
or magnificent array, all these and many more help the
listener to note the progress of the tale. They are almost
like the shifting of the scene in a drama. But the main
purpose of repetitions is to win sympathy by a kind ot
appeal to the whole of ballad literature. No ballad stands
quite alone. It is a member of a class ; and the common
parts are a sort of symbol of kinship. Absolute novelty
would be the reverse of a merit. The audience would miss
the well-known lines, and their appreciation of that which
was new would be lessened.

It is however only by this community of spirit that the
ballads are united. Not infrequently, it is true, several are
found referring to the same person or the same event or

1 74 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

series of events. In some instances they are versions of
a common original, in others they recount independently
different though related incidents. But they cannot be
unified, and they are seldom to be regarded as continua-
tions one of another. There nowhere exists among the
ballads of Scotland such a series of connected pieces as
even the English ballads of Robin Hood, much less series
of ballads which exhibit unity of composition. Popular
poetry showed no tendency, in Scotland at least, to develop
into the epic ; and if the Homeric poems are to be looked
upon as ballads woven together, they present a pheno-
menon very different from any to be found in this country.
It follows that the literary capabilities of popular poetry are
limited. The ballad cannot treat any complex subject.
Though less strictly bounded in length and in range than
the song, it is hardly more fitted to develop many sides
of a theme.

Nevertheless, the ballad is capable, within its own limits,
of rising to the highest excellence ; and the old ballads of
Scotland are peculiarly rich in poetic beauties. The ballad-
makers, by the sheer force of simplicity and truth, suc-
ceeded in picturing nature when more ambitious literary
artists failed. In their handling of the supernatural they
show a profound knowledge of the springs of character.
The best of them betray a strong imaginative sympathy
with their subject, by virtue of which they rise from time to
time to heights of style far above the "aureate terms" of
more pretentious poets. By an unconscious but true artistic
sense, they are often found preparing for some important
point by giving it just that setting which is best suited to bring
it into prominence. And as they lived in an atmosphere of

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1/5

rude chivalry, there shines through their strange and faulty
code of morals the constant light of high and generous
thoughts, dauntless courage, fidelity in friendship, and at
times even sympathy with the weak and generosity to
enemies ; in short, all the characteristic virtues of a strong
race slowly rising through troublous times to a more refined
civilisation.

There are probably no ballads so rich in good poetry
as those which deal with the superstitions of the people.
This is the more remarkable as the great mass of unpoetised
popular superstition is mean and even repulsive. Though
Shakespeare could use witches with supreme effect, there
is in the ordinary belief in witchcraft hardly a single idea
which is not tainted with vulgarity. There are in it ele-
ments of coarseness and a strong infusion of the grotesque ;
but more prevalent than either is the merely commonplace.
The means by which the witches travel through the air,
their transformations and those of their master, their meet-
ings with him and the details of their intercourse, all be-
speak poverty of imagination. Their gruesome dealings
with the dead are a more promising theme : they are
capable of being made awful, though not beautiful. But
there is little in the whole range of the popular creed of
witchcraft for which so much can be said. The poet
who takes up this subject must in effect make his super-
natural for himself The relation between his work and
its foundation is similar to that between a play of Shake-
speare and the original story, so often poor and sapless,
on which he grafts it. In the inanities of vulgar super-
stition there is no poetry, nor any seeming promise of
poetry. Far different in its power over the mind is the

1 76 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

supernatural of the ballads ; yet it has grown out of
common tales of wonder, many of which are in their ele-
ments beggarly enough, and nearly all of which must be
supposed to have sprung from rude originals. Nay,
when the ballads are examined, it frequently proves
that the charm lies, not in the superstition itself, but in
the circumstances with which it is clothed and the lan-
guage in which it is expressed. All the more remarkable
is the proof of the power of the ballad-maker, who, out
of the most unpromising materials and by the simplest
changes, has evolved the beauty of poetry.

Of all superstitions, those concerning the fairies or elves
are among the most frequently repeated. It is not neces-
sary here to discuss the nature and attributes of these
beings : much information on the subject is contained in
Scott's elaborate introduction to the ballad of Young
Tamlane, and it has been amply dealt with since his
time. They are however the centre of some of the
most charming pieces of ballad poetry. The ballads of
Thomas the Rhymer turn upon the connexion between
Thomas and Fairyland, and contain some exquisite and
well-known verses about his intercourse with the queen
of that realm. The idea of the middle path between the
broad and narrow ways is very beautiful — the "pleasant
path that winds across the lily leven." The ballad of
Yoiaig Tainlane itself affords specimens second to none
of this species of poetry. Unfortunately, the version in
Scott's Minstrelsy, which was the first complete one, has
an unsatisfactory history. It is the result of a collation
of earlier printed fragments with a copy in the Glenriddell
MSS. and with several recitations from tradition. Further,

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 177

some verses are added from yet another copy obtained
from a gentleman unnamed, which, we are cautiously told,
"is said to be very ancient." It is not to be wondered
at therefore that some parts of Scott's version bear the
modern stamp ; but there can be little doubt that the
substance of the tale is of considerable antiquity. The
subject is the adventures of a lady with a knight trans-
formed into a fairy. She is the daughter of Dunbar,
Earl March, and he the son of Randolph, Earl Murray.
He avows himself well content to dwell in Elfish Land,
except that every seven years " they pay the teind to
hell " ; and, fearing that he may be chosen, he instructs
the lady how she may win hmi back to earth. The
poetical climax is reached when the lady makes her way
in the dark to the solitary trysting place, where she is to
abide all that the unearthly cavalcade can do to shake
her nerve.

"Gloomy, gloomy was the night,
And eiry was the way,
As fair Janet, in her green mantle,
To Miles Cross she did gae.

"Betwixt the hours of twelve and one,
A north wind tore the bent ;
And straight she heard strange elrich sounds
Upon that wind which went.

"About the dead hour o' the night,
She heard the bridles ring;
And Janet was as glad o' that
As any earthly thing."

These verses are unfortunately among the doubtful parts
of the ballad; but whether they be ancient or modern,

M

178 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

nothing could better show the terrible pressure of the super-
natural upon the human heart than the lines which express
so simply the relief brought by the ring of the fairy bridles.
The sound at least was suggestive of earth ; and everything
else — the darkness, the solitude, above all the purpose with
which the lady was there — tended to fill the mind with
thoughts of the weird and ghostly.

Of more common occurrence than even the superstitions
of the fairies are those which relate to the dead. The
return of the lover's ghost to his mistress, demanding back
his plighted faith and troth, sometimes followed by the
lady's visit to the open grave, is an incident which shows
the belief in the persistence of human relations beyond the
bounds of life. The supposed effect of the presence of a
murderer upon the corpse is well known, and the idea is
widely spread. It is sometimes used in the ballads as a
means of discriminating guilt from innocence. An example
will be found in Earl Richard^ a ballad of terrible revenge
for slighted love. The same ballad illustrates also the more
impressive superstition of the corpse-lights marking the
place where the murdered body lies. It has been sunk in
the "wan water" of Clyde; but no care of search by day
avails. The trial by night is crowned with success, for

"Where that sackless knight lay slain,
The candles burned bright."

The conditions on which the dead are allowed to revisit
the scenes of life are laid down carefully, and with a general
uniformity. The connexion between day and life, between
night and death, suggests itself to every imaginative mind,
and finds expression in the poetry of all nations and ages.
Cock-crow, as the herald of dawn, is the limit of ghostly

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1 79

liberty. Sometimes this is put in most expressive lan-
guage :—

" The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,
The channerin' worm doth chide ;
Gin we be mist out o' our place,
A sair pain we maun bide."

The spirits of the blest, though less frequently than those
which have earned an eternal doom, also wander back to
earth. They likewise appear only in the night; but they
bear the symbol of their happier fate in the form of a cap
or garland of birch. This garland is worn by the sons of
the wife of Usher's Well : —

" It neither grew in syke nor ditch
Nor yet in ony sheugh ;
But at the gates o' Paradise
That birk grew fair eneugh."

The spirits doomed to torment are surrounded by memorials
of their sins, and have hell-hounds for the companions of
their grave.

No superstitions of this class are more impressive than
those which relate to the "waking" of the still unburied
body, especially when the death has been by violence ; and
nowhere are they better expressed than in the fine ballad of
Young Benjie in Scott's Minstrelsy. This ballad gives the
story of true love leading to jealousy, and jealousy ending
in crime. The brothers of the maiden, Marjorie, find her
drowned body, and resolve to take the weird means of dis-
covering the criminal : —

"'The night it is her low lykewake,
The morn her burial day,
And we maun watch at mirk midnight.
And hear what she will say.'

1 80 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

" Wi' doors ajar and candle light,
And torches burning clear,
The streikit corpse, till still midnight.
They waked, but naething hear.

" About the middle o' the night
The cocks began to craw ;
And at the dead hour o' the night.
The corpse began to thraw."

In Scott's introduction to the ballad will be found par-
ticulars relating to the beliefs here indicated. Leaving the
door ajar was one of the means for giving the spirit an
opportunity of revisiting the body.

These are but a few examples of the numberless forms
of belief connected with the unseen world. Some of those
beliefs are merely grotesque, like the changing of a lady
into some loathsome monster, a " laidly worm " or fiery
dragon ; but even with such fancies there are mixed ideas
of beauty, such as the common one of restoration by the
kiss of a knight. Other incidents, as, for example, the
means by which Cospatrick discovers the character of the
lady he has wedded, can hardly be said to do more than
feed the vulgar appetite for wonder. In such cases the
popular superstition is simply versified without being trans-
formed into poetry. But always and in almost all forms
superstition has an irresistible fascination for the minstrels,
and as a rule their imagination glows and brightens under
its influence. Doubtless they themselves felt it most pro-
foundly, and knew that they could most surely reach their
hearers by such means.

But the life which the minstrels knew and which their
audience led was far too active to be represented by a
collection of superstitions. Its energy, its scenes of viol-

THE POPULAR BALLADS. l8l

ence, its " sturt and strife," are faithfully reflected in the
ballads. The oldest of the historical ballads have been
already mentioned in the discussion of the antiquity of
this species of composition ; but there are many other
ballads which, whether truly historical or not, have action
for their subject, the exploits of heroes generally real,
though sometimes not to be identified. Ballads of this
class have a long history. It has been seen that they
start early : they also last late. When that poetic impulse
which produced the more imaginative ballads of romance
had almost passed away, it was still possible to string
rhymes upon a solid basis of fact ; and the jealousy of
the Reformation and the Covenant in respect of profane
poetry had less effect upon this class than upon any other.
But the older ballads are very different from such plebeian
strains as we meet with in those later times. In passing
from the cloudy domain of superstition to the region of
hard realities the minstrels fortunately do not leave their
imagination behind them. Just as they ennoble the vulgar
prosaic features of the popular notions of the spirit world,
so they soften the brutalities of the real life of rude times
and clothe that life in a vesture of noble thoughts and
generous sentiments. It will be objected that this is con-
tradictory of what is universally received as one of the
special merits of the ballads, their fearless acceptance of
facts, however unlovely. That they do fearlessly accept
facts is true. They show that courage which, in more
than one artificial age, has seemed to be leaving the
world — the courage to trust the truth in whatever shape ;
and perhaps the inculcation of this trust is the most
valuable of all the lessons which this unsophisticated

1 82 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

poetry offers to men. But no mere chronicle of facts is
history, and still less can it pretend to be poetry. The
difference between the true poetry of the people, the high-
class ballads, and those which halt along unrhythmical,
unedifying, unadorned by any poetic grace or merit, is
just this, that the former, when they record facts, present
those facts imaginatively; and the latter, while not more
truthful, leave out the imagination.

In the ballads of action all that is best in the life of
the time and country finds a voice. I have called it a
life of rude chivalry. The rudeness is only too evident,
but the chivalry is no less real. Scot of Satchells defined
a freebooter as "a cavalier who risks his life for gain";
and if he had been the wisest of students of the common-
weal he could not have defined him better. Moss-
trooping, raiding and reiving, cattle-driving, whatever the
name by which the organised Border life of robbery was
called, was an intolerable oppression on peaceful neigh-
bours, a thing not to be endured in any well-ordered
community. But it was a life of hardy virtues, and one
w^hich therefore is separated by a broad line from that of
mere criminality. Like piracy in Homeric times it was
sanctioned by public opinion, and this counted for much.
The Border raider did not lose his self-respect; on the
contrary, skill, daring, and success raised him in the
judgment of his neighbours, and, by consequence, in his
own eyes.

Scott's Minstrelsy contains several ballads of Border
raids which throw more light perhaps than anything else
on the ordinary life of the district. The cruelty of the
harrying, the pathos of the harried man's position, the

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1 83

courage to face every risk, the fellow-feeling springing
from the sense of common danger and the intense clan
spirit, all stand out with a distinctness almost unexampled
in literature. The effect could only be produced by per-
fect simplicity and unflinching truth. The harrying of
Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead is a good example.
The suddenness of the onset, the thoroughness with which
the work is done, the pleading of the victim, mingled with
his threats, and its mocking reception, are told with spirit.-
But the poetic merit rises in the latter part. The ruined
man has nothing for it but to gather a band if he can,
and by its help recover his cattle. He sets about it at
once : —

"The sun wasna up, but the moon was down.
It was the gryniing of a new-fa'n snaw,
Jamie Telfer has run ten myles a-foot.

Between the Dodhead and the Stobs's Ha'."

His first appeal for aid meets with a blank refusal, and
he is nearly desperate : —

" My hounds may a' rin masterless,

My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,
My lord may grip my vassal lands.
For there again maun I never be."

But afterwards he meets with more success. Thoughts of
kinship or memories of kindness rouse some of his
neighbours. It is however through "auld Buccleuch,"
to whom Jamie has paid black-mail, that the whole
district is brought to arms. They meet the Captain of
Bewcastle on his way back with the plundered property,
demand its restoration, and on his refusal engage in
deadly battle. The chief incident in the struggle is the

1 84 SCOTTJSn LITERATURE.

death of Willie Scott and its effect on "auld Wat of
Harden " :—

" But he's taen aff his gude steel cap,

And thrice he's waved it in the air —
The Dinlay snaw was ne'er mair white
Nor the lyart locks of Harden's hair."

The battle goes in favour of the Scots, and Jamie Telfer
gets poetic justice, receiving threefold that which he had
lost.

Another specimen of the same class, Kinmont Willie,
may be cited as illustrating the desperate risks a Border
leader was willing to take on behalf of a dependant. It
has a historical foundation, and Scott calls the event " one
of the last and most gallant achievements performed upon
the Border." The subject is the rescue from Carlisle
Castle of William Armstrong of Kinmont, who had been
seized in a time of truce. Buccleuch, as Keeper of the
Border on the Scottish side, gathers a company, sur-
prises the castle, liberates the captive, and swims the
Eden in high flood. The exclamation put in the mouth
of Lord Scroop with reference to the last exploit shows
its desperate nature : —

"He is either himsell a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch maun be ;
I wad na have ridden that wan water,
For a' the gowd in Christentie."

The rescue of the prisoner was all that was attempted ; in
order to show respect for the peace there was no spoiling,
and no violence was done except what was strictly
necessary for Kinmont's liberation. The whole action is
as chivalrous as any of the knightly deeds of daring.

I

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1 85

The examples hitherto quoted have been taken ex-
clusively from the events of that semi-private war which
raged or smouldered incessantly along the Border. Still
nobler traits mark those ballads which relate to circum-
stances of a Avider and truly national interest. Of these
the best are Sir Patrick Spetis and the Battle of Otter-
bourne. The latter originates in an action much of the
Border-raiding class, but lifted by its magnitude into a
higher category. Something has been already said about
the ballads of Otterburn. Whatever the place where
they originated, the excellence of these ballads is un-
questionable ; and some of the most imaginative touches
in the whole range of ballad literature are to be found
in them. Such is the dream of Douglas : —

"But I hae dreamed a dreary dream,
Beyond the Isle of Skye ;
I saw a dead man win a fight,
And I think that man was I."

And when the fatal wound is received he refers to the
dream again and draws comfort from it : —

"*My nephew good,' the Douglas said,
' What recks the death of ane !
Last night I dreamed a dreary dream.
And I ken the day's thy ain.

" 'My wound is deep ; I fain would sleep ;
Take thou the vanguard of the three,
And hide me by the bracken bush.
That grows on yonder lilye lee.

'"O bury me by the bracken bush
Beneath the blooming briar,
Let never living mortal ken.

That e'er a kindly Scot lies here.'"

1 86 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

There is high feehng too, and a beautiful desire to honour
the great leader, in Montgomery's effort to make Percy
yield to the bracken bush — that is, to the dead Douglas,
who, unknown to Percy, lay beneath it. But neither in the
ballads nor elsewhere in literature would it be easy to
find loftier chivalry than that of Percy in the English
version of the Hunting of the Cheviot. It is after the
death of Douglas.

"The Perse leanyde on his brande,

And saw the Duglas de ;
He tooke the dede man be the hande,

And sayd, 'Wo ys me for the !
To have savyde thy lyffe, I wold have pertyde with

My landes for years thre,
For a better man, of harte nare of hande,

Was not in all the north contre.'"

These are specimens of but a few of the many aspects
of the ballads. Their range is considerably wider than is
commonly supposed. Love, pathos, and pity are repre-
sented in them as well as daring activity. This senti-
mental side of the ballads is, as has been already said,
on the whole, a later development than the aspects which
have just been treated. It first appears not independently,
but in conjunction with the simpler strain of action. For
instance, after the crisis of Sir Patrick Spens the poet turns
from those who have struggled and died to those who are
doomed to passive suffering : —

" O lang, lang, may the ladyes sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens ■ . i

Come sailing to the strand !

" And lang, lang, may the maidens sit,
Wi' their goud kaims in their hair,

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1 87

A' waiting for their ain dear loves,
Yox them they'll see nae mair ! "

Sometimes the sentiment, though genuine, receives a
quaint utterance, as in the Douglas Tragedy^ where the
lady bids Lord William hold his hand, for

" True lovers I may get mony a ane,
But a father I can never get mair."

Simplicity is the most prominent quality here ; but in
the same ballad there is evidence of a subtle though
perhaps unconscious artistic skill. Nowhere are repetitions
more skilfully handled. Compare the mounting of the
lovers when their flight begins and after the death of the
lady's brothers : —

" He's mounted her on a milk-white steed,
And himself on a dappled grey,
With a buglet horn hung down by his side,
And lightly they rode away."

This stanza repeated afterwards with the single change of
"lightly" in the last line into "slowly," is far more effective
than any attempt to give variety could be.

Not infrequently the action narrated is of the most
barbarous cruelty. Of this character is the story of
Edom o' Gordon — in which a lady is shut up with her
children in her castle, and there burnt to death. But in
the description of the fate of the daughter the poet has the
skill to turn cruelty into pathos : —

" O then bespake her daughter dear.
She was baith jimp and sma',
' O row me in a pair o' shiets,
And tow me ower the wa'.'

1 88 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

"They rowd her in a pair of shiets
And towd her ower the wa',
But, on the point of Edom's speir,
She gat a deadly fa'.

" O bonny, bonny was hir mouth,
And chirry were hir cheiks,
And cleir, cleir was hir zellow hair,
Whereon the red bUiid dreips.

" Then wi' the speir he turn'd hir ower,

0 gin hir face was wan !

He said, ' Zow are the first that e'er

1 wisht alive again !

" He turn'd hir ower and ower again ;
O gin hir skin was whyte !
He said, ' 1 might ha spard thy life,
To been some man's delyte. ' "

In comparatively rare cases the whole motive of the
ballad is sentimental, so that it stands in close affinity
with the song. It is frequently so with the Yarrow
ballads; and there is no better or more touching example
than the Border Widoivs Lamefit. Motherwell thought
it was "nothing else than a fragment of the English
ballad, entitled The famous Flower of Serving Men;
or, the Lady turn'd Serving Man.'' If so, a poet has
been at work on the original, and has made the story
his own. The famous Flower of Serving Men is a weak
absurd piece, containing some lines which appear in the
Border Widow, but entirely destitute of its beauty. The
Lament, as it appears in the Minstrelsy, is so fine that,
well known though it is, it must be quoted entire as an
unapproached example of one kind of ballad : —

" My luve he built me a bonny bower.
And clad it a' wi' lilye flour

THE POPULAR BALLADS. 1 89

A bravver bovver ye ne'er did see,
Than my true luve he built for me.

" There came a man, by middle day,
He spied his sport, and went away ;
And brought the king that very night.

Who brake my bower, and slew my knight.

" He slew my knight, to me sae dear ;

He slew my knight, and poin'd his gear.
My servants all for life did flee.
And left me in extremetie.

" I sew'd his sheet, making my mane ;
I watch'd the corpse, myself alane ;
I watch'd his body, night and day ;
No living creature came that way.

" I took his body on my back,

And whiles I gaed, and whiles I sat ;
I digg'd a grave, and laid him in.

And happ'd him with the sod sae green.

" But think na ye my heart was sair.

When I laid the moul' on his yellow hair ;
O think na ye my heart was wae,
W^hen I turn'd about, away to gae ?

" Nae living man I'll love again,

Since that my lovely knight is slain ;
Wi' ae lock of his yellow hair,
I'll chain my heart for evermair. "

Enough perhaps has been said to prove that the
ballads, notwithstanding the limitation of their range, are
far from being destitute of variety. There remains how-
ever one feature in them, an occasional one, which is
worthy of special mention, because it is little recognised.
It is the truth and beauty of their incidental references
to nature. Such references always are incidental, for no
ballad-maker takes inanimate nature for his subject.

190 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Still, the natural surroundings of the heroes could not be
ignored, and they are touched skilfully though cursorily.
Sometimes the powers of nature are interpreted as spirit :
behind the storm is dimly seen the figure of the water-
kelpie ; the glamour of light and shadow in woodland
and glade is explained by the myth of the fairies. In
other cases the indiscriminate application of conventional
epithets seems to indicate a certain obtuseness of sense.
Nearly every river is a "wan water," an epithet which by
frequent and indiscriminate use lost whatever meaning
it may have had at first. Yet sometimes the ballad-
maker shows a keen eye for the facts of the world
around him, a sympathetic sense of their relation to
humanity, and great felicity in the use of descriptive
language. The line in Young Tamlane^ " A north wind
tore the bent," is, as Professor Veitch has pointed out,
unsurpassed for pictorial truth. The "bent" is the tall
coarse grass of upland pastures ; and every one familiar
with such scenes knows how truly the effect of a strong
wind, unbroken as it is in such places by tree or hedge
or shelter of any kind, is here given. In Sir Patrick Spens
a single word gives a perfect picture of the ocean rising
into storm — "gurly grew the sea"; and one of the lines
quoted from Jamie Telfer conveys an impression hardly
less vivid of another scene — "'twas the gryming of a
new-fa'n snaw." In the last-mentioned ballad should also
be noted the artistic skill which surrounds the harried
man with just the scenes most consonant with his desolate
condition — utter darkness — "the sun wasna up but the
moon was down," — and that peculiarly comfortless lands-
cape which has neither the brightness of a perfect covering

THE POPULAR BALLADS. I9I

of snow nor the warmth of the fully visible herbage. In
the Yarrow ballads again there is an identification of the
spirit of the scenery with the character of the action in
which Wordsworth recognised something kindred to his
own method. They are all pathetic, and the scenes are
the " dowie dens " of Yarrow. They are not exactly
descriptive ballads, but they exhibit what is rarer, a sense
of the unity under difference of man and nature. Human
passions and emotions are read into the scenes in which
they are displayed.

Though the allusions to nature then are not very
numerous, they have where they occur the accent of
truth. It is strange that this cannot be said of the
humour of the ballads. There is a strain of true humour
in tne songs from the earliest date, but in the ballads it
is forced and inferior. Why this should be it is difficult
to say; but the fact will hardly be disputed by any one
familiar with Scottish ballad literature. Mirth is rare in
it, and pieces, such as The Lodwiaben Harper^ which
attempt to be mirthful, never rise to the level of those
of a more serious cast. Even humorous touches in ballads
prevailingly serious, like Thomas the Rhymer's rejection
of the "tongue that can never lie," on the ground that it
would hamper him in his dealings in the market, are rare.

The old ballads, whose main features have just been
touched upon, having sprung as it were spontaneously
into existence, remained for generations the literature of
the people. It was fortunate that they kept their hold
upon the popular taste and their place in the popular
memory; for they were the means of preserving poetic
feeling and a poetic tradition through ages most inimical

1 92 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

to every form of art; and when at last Scottish literature
revived, great part of its inspiration was drawn from this
source and from the kindred legacy of song which had
likewise been handed down traditionally. It was both
natural and fortunate that the new poets, who felt the
merits of the work of their nameless predecessors, should
attempt imitation. The Scotch writers — Ramsay, Thomson,
Fergusson, Burns — just because they drank the waters of
this fresh spring, helped to lead English poetry back to
nature. Yet the imitation was not successful except in
the department of song, which, in the hands of Burns,
rose to higher excellence than it had ever before attained.
The modern ballads cannot be said to surpass or even
to equal their originals, though there are some fine
specimens amongst them, from Hardykyiute down to those
of Scott and Hogg. There is a tendency even in the
most skilful imitators to trick and frounce the ballad.
It becomes smoother and more graceful ; but the loss of
the old simplicity and directness more than balances all
that is gained. The reason is no doubt that circumstances
had changed. The conditions under which the ballad was
naturally produced had passed away, it had become an
exotic. Not so with the songs. Song-writing was still a
living form of literature; and accordingly Burns and the
others who have re-created Scottish song for modern times
had simply to follow in the old track. But the ballad
required transformation ; and it is only in Scott's Lay
and his later poems that it worthily re-appears in modem
literature. They embody the spirit of the ballad ; but the
form is modified, the artificiality of mere imitation shaken
off, and freedom, spirit, and naturalness reign again.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EARLIER SONGS.

The relation between the songs of Scotland and the
ballads is a very intimate one. They are alike popular
in their character, were alike committed to tradition,
and they have performed similar services in bringing about
the revival of national poetry. But there are differences
in their history as well as in their nature. On the one
hand, there is more old documentary evidence for the
existence of songs than of ballads, and they also began
to be collected sooner than the ballads. None of the
editors previous to Herd gives any considerable number
of ballads, and no really large collection appeared until
the issue of the Border Minstrelsy ; but from Ramsay
downwards the song books were numerous and copious.
Yet it is true of the songs as of the ballads that in the
shape in which we now know them they are almost all
comparatively recent; and it is probable that there are
among them fewer relics of genuine antiquity than among
the ballads. The earliest traces of their existence are
generally vague. Certain names preserved in The Tale
of Colkelbie Sow and the prologues to Gavin Douglas's
Aeneid, throw a feeble ray of light on the subject.

N

194 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

The Complaynt of Scotland too, as in the case of the
ballads, has handed down the names at least of a num-
ber of songs ; and The Gtide and Godly Ballaies, in an
indirect way, have done more ; for, as parodies, they
preserve some knowledge of the structure of the originals
on which they were founded. But though there is
abundant proof of the existence of a considerable number
of songs at least as early as the beginning of the six-
teenth century, and though traces are found of a few of
yet older date, it is as a rule impossible to recover the
original words of these songs. The late Principal Shairp
speaks on this point rather too strongly in his essay,
The Songs of Scotland before Burns. "The oldest extant
songs," says he, "cannot be proved at least to have
existed before the year 1600." Now, that this statement
may be brought even near the truth it is necessary to
understand the name " song " to be strictly confined to
verses set to music and habitually sung by the people.
Of lyrical compositions having all the characteristics of
songs there are plenty in the Bannatyne MS. Many of
these lyrics however are literary exercises which were
probably never known to the j^eople, and were perhaps
not in Shairp's mind as " songs " when he wrote the
sentence quoted. But even in the most restricted sense
that can be assigned to it the statement is not accurate.
There are still extant Scotch songs of a popular char-
acter which can be traced considerably beyond the year
1600. The verses in praise of Allane Matson (probably
the oldest form of the ballad of John Barleycorn)^

' There are several versions of John Barleycorn in the Roxburgh
Ballads. Chappell there says the oldest copy is of the reign of

THE EARLIER SONGS. 195

may be refused the title of a song ; and the Wyf of
Attchtermochiy, an old version of the still well-known
John Grumbly, likewise partakes of the nature of a
ballad. The following lines from it however prove its
connexion with a piece which is still popularly sung : —

"Than vp he gat on ane know heid,
On hir to cray, on hir to schowt,
Scho hard him, and scho hard him not,
Bot stowtly steird the stottis abowt.
Scho draif the day vnto the nicht,
Scho lowisit the plwch and syne come hame ;
Scho fand all wrang that sowld bene richt,
I trow the man thocht richt grit schame."

If the ascription of this piece to Moffat, which is made
in the Bannatyne MS., but not in the hand of Banna-
tyne, be correct, it belongs to the early part of the
sixteenth century ; and in any case it is over thirty
years anterior to 1600. There is also the lively and
amusing song oi Johne Blyth,^ which resembles the song
in Gammer Gurtons Needle, "Back and side go bare, go
bare." One stanza runs as follows : —

"For all the wrak a wreche can pak,
And in his baggis imbrace,
Yit Deid sail tak him be the bak,
And gar him cry Allace !
Than sail he frak away with lak,
And wait nocht to quhat place ;
Than will they mak at him a knak,

James I. (of England), but doubts its southern origin. The Bannatyne
MS. version, in which the ideas at any rate are essentially similar,
is of course older still, and supports the notion of a northern origin.

^ The name, like Allane Matson, is evidently descriptive of the
character of the verses.

196 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

That maist of his gud haiss :

With ane O and ane I, quhile we haif tyme and space,

Mak we gud cheir quhile we art heir

And thank God of his grace."

T/ie Wowing of /ok and Jyjiny is another humorous old
song, the strain of which has been transmitted to much
more recent verses : —

" Robeyn's Jok come to wow our Jynny
On our feist evin quhen we wer fow ;
Scho brankit fast and maid hir bony,
And said, Jok, come ye for to wow ?
Scho birneist her, baith breist and brow,
And maid hir cleir as ony clok ;
Than spak hir deme, and said, I trow
Ye come to wow our Jynny, Jok."

Again, there is another piece beginning, "Was nocht gud
King Solomon," to which is attached a refrain which
nearly corresponds to one still known in popular Scottish
song : —

"Gif this be trew, trew as it wass, lady, lady,
Suld nocht I scherwe yow, allace, my fair lady?"

This, however, is ascribed in a later hand to "ane Inglis-
man." And once more, one of the popular tunes, " Hay,
now the day dauis," is not only fitted to a set of verses
in The Gude and Godly Baliates, but, though the original
words are lost, has received from the pen of Alexander
Montgomery words not of the nature of a parody.

It appears then that Shairp's statement is made in terms
too absolute : there are a certain number of Scottish
songs which can be traced well into the sixteenth century.
Nevertheless, such remnants of an older time are far too
rare. The inquirer who gropes back beyond the union

THE EARLIER SONGS. 197

of the Crowns has not only as a rule to be content with
mere names, but has also to face the difficulty of deter-
mining the nationality of the tunes and songs indicated
by those names. There long prevailed the uncritical
practice, encouraged by the belief that England was nearly
destitute of popular music and poetry, of assuming that
whatever was mentioned by a Scottish authority must
necessarily belong to Scotland. It has now however
been proved that in England popular songs, though most of
them have sunk into oblivion and are now known only to
students, did at one time exist in plenty. Further, some
English songs were popular in Scotland at least as far
back as the fifteenth century. Care must therefore be
taken not to ascribe to Scotland that which is really
English. The critical examination to which the list in
The Coviplaynt of Scotland has been subjected has resulted
in the discovery in it of several English tunes. A similar
doubt as to origin overhangs those which appear in more
recent collections ; and the difficulty has been increased
by the fact that when, after the Restoration, Scotch music
became fashionable in England, English literary hacks
took to manufacturing Scotch songs.^

^ The competence of Durfey and his fellows to manufacture Scotch
songs may be gauged by their treatment of The Blythsome Wedding.
In the Pills to Purge Melancholy, there is a song entitled The Scotch
Wedding, which is simply The Blythsome Wedding in an extraordinary
tongue which the Cockneys of that day were pleased to call Scotch.
In this ridiculous piece the nervous phrases of the old song are
turned into veritable nonsense. " Plouckie fac'd Wat in the Mill"
becomes "pluggy fac'd"; "breeks" are changed to "brick" in a
context which makes the word senseless; " Girn-again Gibby"
becomes "Jenny go Gibby"; " fouth of good gappocks of skate,"
"fish of geud Gabback and Skate"; " povvsodie," "prosody," etc.,

198 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Commonly the music of the songs can be traced
farther back than the words, and is the subject of more
doubt. The history of English tunes has been carefully
investigated by Chappell in his Popular Music of the
Oldcfi Time; and incidentally, though for the most part
in a negative way, he throws some valuable light on
the question of Scottish jaiusic. Of Scottish authorities,
G. Farquhar Graham is the most trustworthy. Earlier
inquirers, as Chappell justly complains, have been either
biassed by national prejudice, or grossly ignorant if not
wilfully false. On the other hand, it may be questioned
whether the English writers on the subject have been
themselves free from bias. They rely too much upon
the oldest MS. copies of songs or tunes, forgetting that

etc. If a Scotch copy older than Durfey did not exist, it would be
necessary, on the reasoning of Chappell, to assume the version in the
Pills to be the original. He has done so in the case of Bonny
Dundee. The first four lines in Durfey run thus : —

"Where gottest thou that Haver-mill bonack?
Blind Booby canst thou not see ;
Ise got it out of the Scotch-man's wallet,
As he lig lousing him under a tree."

Herd's version is as follows : —

"0 whar did ye get that hauver-ineal bannock?
O silly blind body, O dinna ye see,
I got it frae a young brisk sodger laddie
Betwixt St. Johnston and bonny Dundee."

The "Haver-mill bonack" is quite sufficient to dispose of Durfey's
title to originality. He gives the refrain, "Come fill up my cup," etc.,
which is not in Herd. The rest of his song has no connexion with
Herd's version ; it is merely a specimen of the silly lewdness which
pleased his audience; and the " Scotification " consists in the use of
the name Sawney, "Ise" for "I," etc.

1

THE EARLIER SONGS. 1 99

allusions still older, if it can be established that they are
allusions to the same songs or tunes, are evidence equally
valuable. Chappell, for example, lays some stress on the
fact that Johne, come kiss 7ne ?iow, which appears in an
English publication of 1666, is not found in any Scotch
copy older than a MS. which he dates as late as 1745-
This is not much to the point ; for Johtte, cowe kiss me
now was known in Scotland, and was sufficiently popular
there to afford matter for the parodist, about the middle
of the sixteenth century ; and the mere existence of a
Scotch copy of that date would in itself prove no more.
It may not be Scotch, but its publication in England in
1666 clearly affords little or no presumption that it is
English ; while popular familiarity with it (which may be
inferred from the fact that it was parodied) in Scotland a
century earlier seems to turn the presumption quite the
other way. Much the same may be said on the subject
of the tune of The Broom of Cowdenk/io7vs. It is pointed
out that the Scotch song to this tune was classed in The
Tea Table Miscellany as new. But in the oldest known
piece which is set to it, the English song of The Lovely
Norther?! Lass, it is mentioned as "a pleasant Scotch
tune called the Broom of Cowdenknows." The word
Scotch may mean here, as it does frequently, " rustic,"
and it would be unsafe to found upon the use of it ; but
the occurrence of the word Cowdenknows, the name of
a place about four miles from Melrose, cannot be so ex-
plained away. This tune is supposed to be the same as
one referred to by Laneham under the name of Broom,
broom on hil. There is no evidence of identity beyond
the similarity of name, a kind of argument which is scorn-

200 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

fully rejected in other cases; but even if there were, The
Complaynt of Scotland, which also refers to Brume, brume
on hil, carries us back a quarter of a century beyond
Laneham. The evidence — the most ancient reference, the
name of the locality with which it is associated, and the
description of it as "a pleasant Scotch tune" — seems all
in favour of a Scottish origin ; and yet Mr. Furnivall, in
his edition of Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books, marks
it without note of doubt as EngHsh. Where is the proof?
In the reasonings of Chappell and Mr. Furnivall on this
subject there seems to be a premise, generally suppressed,
to the effect that Scotch tunes did not take root in
England much before 1660: therefore, the argument
would run, if a tune or a song is found common to the
two countries before that time, it must have travelled
from England to Scotland, not in the opposite direction.
This is a gratuitous assumption. The English critics, in
concluding that tunes and songs for which there is English
authority must be English, are guilty of just the same
fallacy which they fairly allege against their Scottish pre-
decessors. Those very musicians, upon whose early pre-
sence at the Scottish court Chappell insists, might be
the means of importing into England a knowledge of
Scottish songs. It assuredly cannot be proved, and it is
in itself improbable, that all the Englishmen died in the
country to which they had migrated; and if any of them
returned, what more natural than that they should bear
back a knowledge of the tunes of the north, just as they
seem to have made Scotland familiar with some of English
origin? Every avenue of intercourse from north to south
opens a similar possibility.

THE EARLIER SONGS. 201

The subject of national music is however one into
which there is no need to enter here. It is to the point
only in so far as the tunes may be the means of tracing
the history of the words ; and the questions in dispute
among the musicians are for the present purpose the less
important, because very frequently where the origin of
the tune is doubtful no such doubt attaches to the
words. It will be sufficient therefore to state what
evidence of old date there is of the existence of Scottish
tunes. The Complaynt bears witness at once to words
and music. Tlie Tale of Colkelbie Sow proves the exist-
ence at least of the tunes. But no copies of Scottish
music are known of nearly so great antiquity, none which
date farther back than the seventeenth century. Perhaps
the oldest is the Straloch MS., dated 1627-9. The
Skene MSS., for which a greater antiquity was claimed
by Stenhouse, are believed by the best judges to be at
least as late as 1630-40. A MS. now lost, which was in
Stenhouse's possession, .was by him referred to the
beginning of the reign of James VI. ; but as he was too
untrustworthy to be himself accepted as an authority,
and as there is now no means of checking his opinion,
it must be disregarded. Another collection known as
the Rowallan MS., which belonged to Sir William Mure,
who died in 1657, is unimportant because chiefly made
up of foreign material. These are the oldest extant
repositories of Scottish music. Through them and a few
other MSS. of somewhat later date it is possible to trace
back into the seventeenth century a considerable number
of tunes. In some cases the songs sung to those tunes
first appeared in Ramsay; and where these songs are

202 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

marked as old, it is fair to regard the music books as
supporting their antiquity.

These two lines of evidence, the one relating to the
words, the other to the music, do not after all establish
any considerable antiquity. That there were songs cen-
turies earlier than the period to which they reach is
certain : the often-quoted fragments on Edward I. and on
Bannockburn prove that ; but the very frequency with
which those fragments are quoted also proves how
scanty are the remains. Practically, for the modern
student, Scottish song begins in the sixteenth century,
and it has no considerable volume till the beginning of
the eighteenth. How far back the old songs recovered
by the eighteenth century collectors may date it is im-
possible to say. We have seldom the means of tracing
them even inferentially as we have in the case of several
of the ballads. Few of them before the times of the
Jacobite risings are historical; and few of them even
embody facts of a traditionary character. Probably many
were in existence generations before they appeared in
print; but it is impossible as a rule to discriminate
between pieces of immemorial antiquity and those which
are by comparison but of yesterday. The term " old
song " is elastic ; and the early collectors have generally
given no other means, if they possessed any themselves,
of determining age. The pieces preserved by their care
must be regarded somewhat differently from the ballads
gathered by Scott and others. It has been already
pointed out that there is reason to suppose that ballad-
making had ceased for some time before ballad-collecting
began ; so that unless we adopt the Lady Wardlaw

THE EARLIER SONGS. 203

hypothesis or some equivalent, the natural inference must
be that a ballad preserved in the popular memory is of
respectable antiquity. But the production of songs has
never ceased to the present day. Further, it is known
that when the merit of the old songs began to be per-
ceived and interest in them to grow, men became aware
also that many of them were too coarse even for the
not very squeamish society of some two hundred years
ago. The remark, more than once quoted since, of
William Geddes in his Saifits' Recreation expresses the
opinion held by many. He says it is alleged by some
" that many of our ayres or tunes are made by good
angels, but the letters or lines of our songs by devils."
To preserve the angelic part new words were written,
which had often the effect of consigning the old to
oblivion ; and thus even when it can be proved that an
old song to a particular tune existed, there remains a
doubt whether the words which may still survive are the
old song in question.

Many, therefore, of the old songs have disappeared ;
the history of others is shrouded in doubt; and there
are only a few which can be traced back much beyond
two hundred years. But while everyone must deeply re-
gret the loss of memorials of the past which would have
been interesting alike to the philologist, to the student
of life and manners, and to the student of literature, it
may be questioned whether as much poetry has perished
with them as is commonly supposed. It is a known
fact that ballads tend to deteriorate from age to age,
and that when an older version is recovered it generally
shows a force and fire far beyond anything in the

204 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

modernised copy — witness the difference between the
ancient Hunting of the Cheviot, and the more recent
Chevy Chase. That a similar deterioration has taken
place in some of the songs is equally certain. Allan
Ramsay and those coadjutors who in the early part of
the eighteenth century supplied so many new verses to
the old tunes, were by no means gifted with the sure
taste afterwards displayed by Burns in performing the
same task. In some instances, where the unsophisticated
song exists, the inferiority of the additions may be de-
monstrated ; in other cases there is great reason to
suspect similar inferiority. Nevertheless it may be doubted
whether the course of the songs has been on the whole,
like that of the ballads, downward. That Burns adorned
nearly every old song he touched is unquestionable ; and
so did Baroness Nairne and the other ladies who with
her attempted to substitute purity for licentiousness, and
innocent mirth for scurrility and low buffoonery. It is
certain that the songs have been raised in moral tone.
There is only too much reason to believe that the old
words sung by the peasantry were in general very coarse.
Neither Burns nor Allan Ramsay was given to straining
at gnats ; but they felt, in common with all who have
laboured in the same field, that the rustic muse over-
stepped too far the bounds of decency. When this is
the case it is generally found that licentiousness of
language is the only raiso?i d'etre of the piece, those to
whom it is addressed neither desiring nor understanding
the beauties of poetry ; and it may be suspected that
such " high-kilted " pieces are, for their intrinsic merits as
verse, no great loss to the world.

THE EARLIER SONGS. 205

It is not however to be supposed that all in the old
songs was worthless, feeble, or purely licentious. Burns,
an excellent, though perhaps a prejudiced judge, spoke
of the forgotten authors of those nameless old lyrics as
men of genius ; and there is much in the remains,
especially perhaps in the remains of the songs of
humour, to justify this strong language. It has been
necessary to point out that the ballads are poor in
humour. Not so the songs, they are brimming over with
it. The song is a better vehicle for mirth than the
ballad. Humour springs from the mode in which the
poet views his subject ; it is not naturally part of a
narrative of facts, but a way of regarding events or life.
The ballad method of narrative, therefore, is unfavourable
to it ; but not so the lyric appeal to sentiment. The
chorus of the song too is helpful ; it enlists the sympathy
of the audience by making them partakers of the fun.
Had not the quality of humour appeared where it does the
literature of the people would in this respect have been
inexplicably untrue to the national character, and inex-
plicably different from the more formal parts of the national
literature. Notwithstanding all the jests levelled at the
dense impenetrability to fun which is said to be a mark
of the Scot, humour has been a quality always exceedingly
prominent in Scottish literary men. In Dunbar, in Lindsay,
in Buchanan, in Knox, in Burns, in Scott, in Carlyle, in
almost every Scotchman of note in literature there is a
deep and rich vein of it. There is a vein no less rich
in popular song ; and it is all the more interesting to
note it because many of the songs were apparently pro-
duced under circumstances extremely unfavourable to

206 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

everything light-hearted. The Reformed Kirk denounced
the curse of God not only against the sins of the people,
but too often against their harmless mirth. How dis-
astrous was the effect of those denunciations upon the
recognised literature of the country is evident from the
great blank in literature which the seventeenth century
shows. Nothing that was merely worldly, or was regarded
as such by the bigot, had a fair chance, unless it was
too obscure to catch his eye. Happily, the song-writers
were too obscure. Some indeed of the popular bards
incurred punishment, but generally they presented a target
too small for clerical shot. They made excellent use of
their immunity. Whoever has formed an idea of the
Scotchman as a solemn, saturnine animal, incapable of
laughter, and finding life " fu' o' sairiousness," will be
astonished at the revelation these song- writers make.
Their mirth is not of the half-hearted kind ; it is loud,
riotous, scornful of decorum. The country was priest-
ridden, or minister-and-elder-ridden ; it was desperately
poor; life for the greater number was altogether hard and
unlovely. Yet the spirit of the popular singers is pre-
vailingly and even immoderately mirthful. The pieces in
the Bannatyne MS. may, and probably most of them do,
descend from a time anterior to the religious troubles ;
but there are many in later collections which can only
be regarded as the expression of joyousness springing
irrepressibly from the midst of the gloom. Even in the
heat of the struggles of the Covenant humour is the
most conspicuous quality.

The humorous songs cover pretty nearly all the phases
of rural life which are susceptible of such a treatment.

THE EARLIER SONGS. 207

Courtship, marriage, matrimonial disputes, rustic extrava-
gance and rustic parsimony, country festivities, bacchan-
alian good-fellowship, vagabondage — all are celebrated in
verses as racy and fresh as any of their kind in existence.
They are not free from coarseness; but there is little or
nothing in them which merits the name of licentiousness.
Time in this case has happily sunk the grosser matter,
and carried down to us the relatively pure.

The favourite subject of the singer is almost of necessity
love. It lends itself equally to a seriously sentimental and
to a comic treatment. The songs of the latter description
have the advantage of affording much information inci-
dentally as to the condition of the country population.
The Wozcn'fig of Jok and Jynny, from which a quotation
has already been given, furnishes, through the vanity of
the girl's mother, an inventory of common rustic posses-
sions, doubtless somewhat of the nature of a caricature.
So too, though with less elaboration, does Miiirland
Willie, another song of the same class marked Z {i.e. old)
in The Tea Table Miscella?iy. The equipment of the wooer,
"with durk and pistol by his side," as Burns remarks,
points back to an unsettled state of the country when there
was no assurance whether he who rode forth so furnished
"would tilt with lips or lances." The wooing is con-
ducted with a frankness which results in a speedy agree-
ment, and yet not without a rude courtesy. The famous
song of The Blythsome Wedding,"^ which is unsurpassed in

1 This piece has been generally ascribed to Francis Semple of Bel-
trees, whose father, Robert Semple, is believed to have written The
Piper of Kilba7-chan. Another for whom The Blythsome Wedding has
been claimed is Sir William Scott of Thirlestane; but the grounds

2o8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

its class, depicts with wonderful spirit the final scene to
which courtship is expected to lead. It bears curious
witness to the prevalence of nicknames. In the long list
of expected guests there are but two or three who are
honoured with surnames, all the rest being distinguished
by some personal appellative, generally referring either to
profession or to a physical peculiarity. It paints too with
great force and effect the barbarous plenty of a rustic feast.
The author, whoever he was, had an intimate acquaintance
with the details of Scotch humble life, an unfailing flow
of language, and a rich gift of broad humour. Burns
himself rarely portrayed with greater vigour a scene of
rural jollity. Francis Semple has been credited also with
the song of Maggie Lmider, which is in some respects
similar to The Blythsome Wedding. No copy however is
known earlier than Herd's collection. If, as is probable,
this song really belongs to the seventeenth century, it is
perhaps the most remarkable illustration extant of the
mirth of country life ; and that just because it refers to no
pre-determined merry gathering, but is the spontaneous out-
burst of a chance meeting. The wandering piper and the
merry dancer prove that the efforts to suppress human
nature had been less successful than they seem on the
surface to have been ; otherwise the piper's profession
could not have survived. And he was not the only one
of his kind. The reference to Habbie Simson as a lost
leader in the art shows that his was a well-known if
irregular occupation.

on which it is assigned to either of them are so unsatisfactory that it
must be treated as anonymous; nor is there any definite means of deter-
mining its date beyond the fact that it first appeared in Watson in 1706.

THE EARLIER SONGS. 209

In The Blythsomc Weddiyig, Maggie Lauder, etc., the
humour is shown in the appreciative and sympathetic
description of scenes naturally gay. It is therefore broad
rather than sly. But the mark of slyness is no less fre-
quently present. Sometimes matrimonial bickerings give
occasion to it, sometimes it springs from the preaching
of the philosophy of parsimony. Of the latter description
an admirable specimen exists in My jo Janet, which first
appeared in The Tea Table Miscellany, where it is without
mark to indicate whether it was then old or new. But
though the age of the verses is uncertain, the tune at least
is as old as the Straloch and Skene MSS. This piece is
a dialogue, the point of which is the quiet and skilful
parrying of a country beauty's requests. In this, as in
many other cases, an English version exists prior to that
of Ramsay, but far inferior, and rather like a corruption
than an original. Somewhat similar, but more out-spoken,
is The Cock-Laird {i.e. small landowner), which is generally
attributed to Ramsay, but which is in truth an old song
touched up and made a little more decent, and also
more witty, by him. An equally canny philosophy is
inculcated in the famous old song, Tak your auld cloak
about ye. Of this, as is well known from Othello, England
possessed a version; and as it cannot be traced back in
Scotland beyond The Tea Table Miscellany, it would be
worse than rash to affirm its origin to be Scottish. It
may be interesting however to quote the lines of the
northern version which correspond with those in Shake-
speare : —

"In days when our King Robert rang,
His trews they cost but half-a-croun ;
O

2 I O SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

He said they were a groat ower dear,

And ca'd the tailor thief and loon ;
He was the King that wore a croun,

And thou's the man of laigh degree :
It's pride puts a' the country doun ;

Sae tak thy auld cloak about ye."

In this instance it is the wife who preaches thrift and
industry to the husband ; as a rule the parts of the sexes
are reversed, as in the examples spoken of above. In a
different key, but still turning on marital disputes, is Tke
Barring of the Door, certainly the best known at the
present day of all its class. This song was recovered by
Herd, but its age is absolutely unknown. It narrates a
ludicrous adventure with inimitable vigour, and well de-
serves the favour it has kept for over a hundred years.

There is hardly any phase of life, however serious and
even terrible, which may not serve the comic poet.
Andrew Fletcher considered vagrancy in Scotland an evil
so threatening as to justify the proposal to reduce the
poorer population to slavery. His less philosophical
countrymen, careless of the danger, have always been
keenly alive to the humours of a life cut off from ordi-
nary ties and responsibilities. This sympathy finds its
most exuberant and most poetical expression in Burns's
Jolly Beg^^ars. Herd has preserved a song of nearly the
same title as Burns's poem. The Jolly Beggar ; and The
Tea Table Miscellany contains a much more celebrated
piece. The Gaberlunzie Man. The authorship of both has
been attributed to no less a personage than James V. ;
but there is no evidence sufficient to connect them with
him. In Ramsay The Gaberlunzie Man is marked with
the letter "J," which may stand for the King; but even

THE EARLIER SONGS. 2 1 1

if it was so meant, Ramsay's authority is not great.
Whoever was the writer, his work is admirably done. The
gaberlunzie is as void of care as any of Burns's beggars ;
and he succeeds in impressing the daughter of the house
in which he finds shelter with the happiness of his life.
The couple face the world with light-hearted glee : —

"Meantime, far hint out ower the lea,
Fu' snug in a glen, where nane could see,
The twa, with kindly sport and glee,

Cut frae a new cheese a whang.
The prievin was guid — it pleased them baith ;
To lo'e her aye he gae her his aith ;
Quo' she, to leave thee I will be laith,

My winsome gaberlunzie man."

In the ideal society such scenes and such subjects would
be impossible ; but until some approximation is made to
that society it is perhaps not to be regretted that they can
at times brighten the gaiety of nations. Many excellent
people of the present day see however nothing but evil in
a cognate class of songs through which there has run
for generations a peculiarly rich strain of humour — the
bacchanalian songs. A large number of the songs of
humour have something to say in praise of drink ; some
are entirely devoted to it ; and it can hardly be denied,
whether the fact be matter for sorrow or not, that Bacchus
has bestowed upon his votaries no small measure of inspira-
tion. Andro and his Cutty Gun, one of Ramsay's col-
lection, is what Burns called it, " the work of a master."
But in all the class the highest place certainly belongs to
Todlin Jlame, which the same critic, competent alike from
his gift of poetry and his spirit of conviviality, pronounced
"perhaps the first bottle-song that ever was composed."

212 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

"When I hae a saxpence under my thoom,

Then I get credit in ilka toun ;

But, aye when I'm poor they bid me gang by,

Oh, poverty pairts guid company !

Todiin hame, and todlin hame,
Couldna my love come todlin hame ?

•' Fair fa' the guid wife and send her guid sale ;

She gies us white bannocks to relish her ale ;

Syne, if that her tippeny chance to be sma',

We tak a guid scour o't, and ca't awa'. ,
Todlin hame, todlin hame.
As round as a neep come todlin hame.

" My kimmer and I lay doun to sleep.

And twa pint-stoups at our bed's feet ;

And aye when we waken'd we drank them dry : —

What think ye o' my kimmer and I ?
Todlin but, and todlin ben,
Sae round as my love comes todlin hame.

" Leeze me on liquor, my todlin dow,
Ye're aye sae guid-humour'd when weetin' your mou' ;
When sober sae sour, ye'll fecht wi' a flee.
That 'tis a blithe nicht to the bairns and me,
When todlin hame, todlin hame.
When, round as a neep, ye come todlin hame."

Poetry which is strong in humour is seldom or never
deficient in sentiment and pathos ; for humour impHes the
same sympathy on which these quaUties rest. Accordingly
we find that the popular singers of Scotland have been
from the earliest times equally at home in either strain. As
the audience for which they wrote was mainly agricultural,
there being practically no manufactures and no large town
populations, their poetry is frequently linked with agri-
cultural pursuits. There are numerous pastoral songs,

THE EARLIER SONGS. 213

some of them of high excellence. These songs are in
no way related to the artificial pastoral founded upon
classical models ; it is no Arcadia which they picture, but
the actual life of Scottish shepherds and husbandmen.
The poets of the eighteenth century did, it is true, reduce it
to conventionality ; but a number of songs have been pre-
served in which the earlier, simpler, and more natural note
is heard. Such are Ettrick Banks, which appeared in the
Orpheus Caledonius, and to which Ramsay gave the place of
honour in the fourth volume of The Tea Table Miscellany.
Even finer is the Ew-bughts Marion, which Ramsay marks
with the letter Q, to indicate that it is an old song with
additions. But more interest still attaches to O the ewe-
buglitins bonnie, for the sake of its author, the Lady Grizzel
Baillie, whose faithful attendance upon her father. Sir
Patrick Home, when he was lurking in concealment in
the family vault of Polwarth, forms one of the best known
and most interesting of the stories of the sufferings of the
Covenanters. She was the first of a numerous band of
ladies of rank who laboured to purify, and who embellished
while they purified, the songs of their country. Only two
songs of Lady Grizzel's are known. A stanza of one of
them, Were na my heart licht I wad die, was quoted,
with a reference to himself, by Burns in his own later
and sadder days : —

" His bonnet stood aye fu' round on his broo ;
His auld ane look'd aye as weel as some's new ;
But now he lets 't wear ony gate it will hing,
And casts himself dowie upon the corn-bing."

Her pastoral song is merely a fragment, but a beautiful
one : —

2 1 4 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

" O, the ewe-buchtin's bonnie, baith e'ening and mom.
When our blythe shepherds play on the bog-reed and horn ;
While we're niilkinfj, they're lilting, baith pleasant and clear —
But my heart 's like to break when I think on my dear.

" O, the shepherds take pleasure to blow on the horn,
To raise up their flocks o' sheep soon i' the morn ;
On the bonnie green banks they feed pleasant and free.
But, alas, my dear heart, all my sighing 's for thee."

The love songs are as rich and varied as the songs of
humour. Aspiration, hesitancy, success, the praise of the
maiden's charms or of the youth's strength and courage,
the pleasures of reunion, and the wail of the betrayed
and forsaken, all come within the compass of the singer.
None of its class can surpass Aye ivaukiii, O ! — a perfect
song, v.'hich has had the fortune to be the subject of a
perfect criticism^ : —

*' O, I'm wat, wat,

O, I'm wat and weary ;
Yet fain wad I rise and rin

If I thocht I would meet my dearie.
Aye waukin', O !

Waukin' aye, and weary ;
Sleep I can get nane

For thinkin' o' my dearie.

" Simmer 's a pleasant time,
Flowers o' every colour ;
The water rins ower the heugh,
And I long for my true lover.

" When I sleep I dream.
When 1 wauk I'm eerie.
Sleep I can get nane,

For thinkin' o' my dearie.

1 Tiie criticism referred to is that of Ur. John Brown in Home
Subsecizae ; and the song is here given according to his version of it.

THE EARLIER SONGS. 21 S

" Lanely nicht comes on,
A' the lave are sleepin' ;
I think on my true love,

And blear my een wi' greetin'.

" Feather beds are saft—

Pentit rooms are bonnie ;
But ae kiss o' my dear love
Better 's far than ony.

" O for Friday nicht !

Friday at the gloamin' ;
O for Friday nicht —
Friday 's lang o' comin' ! "

The collection of Herd includes a few wonderfully
beautiful fragments. The exquisite lines beginning, 0 gin
my love were yon red rose, are widely known through Burns.
Another, the song of a forsaken woman, though perhaps less
popular, has an equal charm : —

" False luve, and hae ye played me this,
In the simmer, 'mid the flowers ?
I sail repay ye back again,

In the winter 'mid the showers.

" Bot again, dear luve, and again, dear luve.
Will ye not turn again ?
As ye look to ither women,
Sail I to ither men."

More characteristic of Scotland is the charming song
of reunion. Here awd , there awcC. It is one of those
which underwent revision at the hands of Burns ; but
though he has added some beauties he has destroyed
others. There is perhaps nothing in the old version as
given by Herd equal to the lines,

" Now welcome the simmer and welcome my Willie,
The simmer to nature, my Willie to me " ;

2 1 6 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

but, as a whole, the old song is the finer of the two : —

" Here awa', there awa', here awa' Willie,
Here awa', there awa', here awa' hame !
Lang have I sought thee, dear have I Ijought thee,
Now I have gotten my Willie again.

*' Thro' the lang muir I have followed my Willie ;

Through the lang muir I have followed him hame,
Whatever betide us, nocht shall divide us ;
Love now rewards all my sorrow and pain.

" Here awa', there awa', here awa' Willie,
Here awa', there awa', here awa' hame !
Come, Love, believe me, nothing can grieve me.
Ilka thing pleases while Willie 's at hame."

Songs with a strain of pathos such as this take always a
deeper hold upon the feelings than those of a lighter
character. The effect is not lessened when the pathos
is unrelieved by a happy end. Of the older songs which
are purely pathetic, two have been generally singled
out as of surpassing excellence. One of these, commonly
known as Lady Anne Botlnveli's Lament, has been
proved to be of English origin ; the other, Waly, Waly,
whose poetic merit is at least equal, is Scotch, Attempts
have been made to give a historical account of it; but
there does not seem to be sufficient groimd for identifying
the song with any particular person or event. In
Ramsay it bears the mark of unknown age, Z.

" O waly, waly up the bank.

And waly, waly down the brae,
And waly, waly yon burn-side.

Where I and my love wont to gae.
I lean'd my back unto an aik,

I thought it was a trusty tree.
But first it bow'd, and syne it brak,

Sae my true love did lightly me.

THE EARLIER SONGS. 217

" O waly, waly, but love be bonny,

A little time while it is new,
But when 'tis auld, it waxeth cauld,

And fades away like morning-dew.
O wherefore should I busk my head ?

Or wherefore should I kame my hair ?
For my true love has me forsook,

And says he'll never love me mair.

" Now Arthur Seat shall be my bed.

The sheets shall ne'er be fyl'd by me,
Saint Anton's well shall be my drink,

Since my true love has forsaken me.
Martinmas wind when wilt thou blaw,

And shake the green leaves off the tree ?
O gentle death, when wilt thou come ?

For of my life I am weary.

" 'Tis not the frost that freezes fell,

Nor blawing snaw's inclemencie :
'Tis not sic cauld that maks me cry.

But my love's heart grown cauld to me.
When we came in by Glasgow town.

We were a comely sight to see ;
My love was clad in the black velvet,

And I mysell in cramasie.

" But had I wist before I kiss'd,

That love had been sae ill to win,
I'd lock'd my heart in a case of gold.

And pinn'd it with a silver pin.
Oh, oh ! if my young babe were born,

And set upon the nurse's knee,
And I mysell were dead and gane ;

For a maid again I'll never be."

But though the most copious illustrations of pathos are to
be found among the love songs, there are some exquisite
touches of the kind referring to other concerns of life.
There are few more beautiful verses among the songs than

2 1 8 . SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

those of Armsirofig's Goodnight, in the Border Minstrelsy.
"The following verses," says Scott, "are said to have been
composed by one of the Armstrongs, executed for the
murder of Sir John Carmichael of Edrom, Warden of the
Middle Marches. The tune is popular in Scotland ; but
whether these are the original words, will admit of a doubt."
The murder of Sir John Carmichael occurred in 1600. The
verses run thus : —

" This night is my departing night,
For here nae langcr must I stay ;
There's neither friend nor foe o' mine,
But wishes me away.

" What I have done thro' lack of wit,
I never, never can recall ;
I hope ye're a' my friends as yet ;

Goodnight, and joy be with you all !"

Again, in the song of Leader Haiiglis and Yarrotv, the poet
takes upon himself a wider range of sympathy. Not his
own fate, nor the feeling of his personal friends, but the
state of the country, the contrast between the present and
the past, is the source of his feeling.

" Sing Erslington and Cowdcnknowes,

Where Homes had ance commanding ;
And Drygrange, with the milk-white yowes,

'Twixt Tweed and Leader standing :
The bird that flees through Red path trees

And Gladswood banks ilk morrow,
May chant and sing sweet Leader Ilaughs

And bonnie howms of Yarrow.

" But minstrel Burne cannot assuage
His grief, while life endureth.
To see the changes of this age.
Which fleeting time procureth :

THE EARLIER SONGS. 219

For many a place stands in hard case,

Where blyth folk kcn'd nae sorrow,
With Homes that dwelt on Leader-side,

And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow."

In these lines we may note the skill with which the old
bard uses proper names, an art which Mr. Palgrave justly
regards as one of the marks of the true poet. The piece
was the work of a man named Burne, one of the last who in
the seventeenth century plied the trade of minstrel ; and
one who, as a member of a profession sinking under the
changes of fleeting time, was entitled to complain of those
changes, and of the altered fortunes of great families. This
lament of the minstrel over the passing away of all things
old, may fitly close the notice of the older songs. Those
of a later date belong to a state of society widely different,
especially upon that Border land to which the minstrel
belonged.

END OF VOL. I.

GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE.

1 ! !M'

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